f  lie  Dev^lopmeirt 
of  Christianity 


BR  145  .P5213  1910 
Pfleiderer,  Otto,  1839-190S 
The  development  of 
Christianity 


The   Development    of 
Christianity 


EARLIER   BOOKS 
By  DR.  PFLEIDERER 

UNIFORM  WITH  THIS  VOLUME 

CHRISTIAN  ORIGINS 
RELIGION  AND  HISTORIC  FAITHS 


The  Development  of 
Christianity  ^0wmci 

JUN  27  1910 
/        BY  ^^^£6IUI^ 

OTTO  PFLEIDERER,  D.D. 

Professor  at  the  University  of  Berlin 


TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  GERMAN  BY 

DANIEL  A.  HUEBSCH,  Ph.D. 


AUTHORIZED  EDITION 


NEW    YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 

1910 


Copyright  1910,  by 
B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


PRINTED  IN  U.  S.  A. 


PREFACE 

After  the  publication  of  my  lectures  on  the 
origins  of  Christianity,  two  years  ago,  lay-readers 
expressed  the  wish  that  I  continue  the  history  of 
Christianity  along  the  same  lines,  so  that  the  con- 
nection displayed  in  the  whole  might  serve  as  a 
proof  of  the  correctness  of  my  interpretation  of  the 
origins.  I  could  not  deny  the  justice  of  that  wish ; 
thereupon,  I  resolved  to  supplement  the  first  series 
of  lectures  in  both  directions ;  a  series  looking  back- 
ward, on  the  general  history  of  religion,  (''Re- 
ligion und  Rehgionen")^  delivered  last  year  and 
since  published,  and  by  a  series  looking  forward 
on  the  development  of  Christianity  to  the  present 
day,  delivered  this  Winter  before  the  same  mixed 
audience.  These  three  series  of  lectures  form  a 
trilogy,  giving  a  connected  and  condensed  review 
of  the  whole  of  the  religious  life  of  humanity  from 
its  primitive  beginnings  to  the  present  stage  of  its 
development. 

Often  I  was  painfully  conscious  of  the  great  dif- 
ficulty of  compressing  the  great  mass  of  material 
into  the  narrow   frame  of  a   few  lectures  without 

1  English  translation  under  the  title  "  Religion  and  Historic 
Faiths,"  1907. 

3 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

making  the  latter  too  superficial  or  unintelligible; 
but  I  wished  to  carry  out  the  work  as  well  as  my 
powers  permitted,  hoping  thus  to  assist  some  of 
my  lay  contemporaries  to  a  better  understanding  of 
reHgious  matters,  or,  at  least,  to  spur  them  on  to 
the  reading  of  more  comprehensive  works  which 
fill  in  the  gaps  of  the  present  volume  so  that  they 
may  instruct  themselves  more  thoroughly  than  is 
possible  by  this  summary  review. 

For  those  who  desire  to  study  the  subject  of  these 
lectures  in  greater  detail,  I  recommend  especially 
the  works  on  Church  history  by  Baur  and  Hase. 
They  are  mutually  complementary.  The  former  is 
remarkable  for  his  large  and  spirited  interpretation 
of  the  main  ideas  of  that  epoch,  of  the  fundamental 
thoughts  of  the  great  teachers  and  heroic  leaders 
as  well  as  of  the  teleological  connection  in  the  en- 
tire development.  The  latter  is  masterly  in  the 
wealth  of  detail,  the  art  of  vivid  narration  and  the 
nice,  intelligent  characterization  of  the  actors  in 
their  relation  to  their  environment.  The  two  writ- 
ers have  in  common  great  objectivity  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  material ;  they  have  the  ability  to  trans- 
pose themselves  without  prejudice  into  times  past 
and  persons  distant  and  foreign,  as  well  as  to  judge 
them  justly  on  the  basis  of  the  conditions  of  their 
own  day. 

In  the  introductory  lecture,  I  defend  Baur's  evo- 
lutionistic  view  of  history  against  the  old  Protes- 
tant theory  of  a  fall  and  degeneration  which  has 

4 


Preface 

been  revived  recently  —  with  more  emphasis  by 
Ritschl  and  his  school,  and  enjoys  a  large  measure 
of  success  among  living  theologians.  Naturally, 
this  is  no  proof  of  the  correctness  of  that  theory 
which  dates  from  the  days  of  narrowest  dogmatism. 
Despite  all  appearance  to  the  contrary, —  for  I  do 
stand  now  in  opposition  to  an  overwhelming  major- 
ity,—  I  am  firmly  convinced  that  sooner  or  later 
theology,  too,  will  consent  to  an  unconditional  ex- 
ercise and  logical  employment  of  the  idea  of  evolu- 
tion in  the  branches  of  biblical  and  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory. Theology  will  gain  much  thereby.  The 
greatest  gain  will  lie  in  the  fact  that  theology  will 
overtake  the  other  sciences,  which  took  this  progres- 
sive step,  more  than  a  century  ago.  Another  ad- 
vantage will  accrue  in  the  decrease  of  internal 
oppositions  between  the  different  Church  factions, 
which  are  at  present  so  abnormally  strong  that 
everywhere  it  is  dogmatism  against  dogmatism, 
each  as  narrow  and  as  exclusive  as  the  other. 

The  evolutionistic  method  of  thinking  will  change 
all  this  when  it  comes.  It  is  like  that  legendary 
spear  which  wounds  and  heals  the  hurt.  It  liber- 
ates the  thinking  spirit  from  all  heteronomous  lim- 
itations of  the  past,  by  resolving  those  authorities 
which  were  supposed  to  be  absolute  into  conditional 
products  of  evolution  and  relative  factors  of  devel- 
opment. On  the  other  hand,  however,  it  recognizes 
that  these  things  of  the  past  —  these  forms  of  faith 
and  Hfe  which  appear  so  strange  in  our  day  —  are 

5 


The  Development  of  CHristianity 

the  natural  and  justified  forms  in  which  the  truth 
appeared  at  certain  stages  of  development.  They 
are  the  relatively  true  means  by  which  the  human 
spirit  struggles  upward  from  the  clutch  of  nature 
to  freedom  in  God.  For  this  reason,  the  old-time 
forms  of  faith  are  esteemed  and  reverenced. 

Thus  the  evolutionistic  mode  of  thinking,  and  it 
alone,  serves  the  supremely  valuable  purpose  of  all 
historical  knowledge,  which  consists  in  the  attempt 
to  understand  the  roots  of  present  living  and  striv- 
ing buried  in  the  past,  and  the  attempt  to  conserve 
their  nourishing  forces,  without  suffering  them  to 
hamper  our  own  activity  in  the  present  and  our  rest- 
less striving  after  the  ideals  of  the  future.  "  To 
reconcile  reverence  with  clearness,  to  deny  false- 
hood and  yet  to  believe  and  worship  the  truth  " — 
in  these  words,  the  historian  and  philosopher,  Car- 
lyle,  rightly  stated  the  task  for  which  historical 
training  should  be  useful  to  modern  man.  The 
present  popular  volume  and  its  two  predecessors  are 
intended  as  a  modest  contribution  toward  the  same 
end. 

Otto  Pfleiderer. 

Gross-Lichterfelde,  near  Berlin, 
March,  1907. 


CONTENTS 

Introduction 9 

BOOK  I 

DEVELOPMENT     OF    CHRISTIANITY     TO 
THE  REFORMATION 

I.  Paul  and  John,  Apologists  and  Anti-gnostics  .     35 

II.  Clemens  and  Origen  of  Alexandria   ....     50 

III.  Dogma  and  Morals 66 

IV.  Ceremonial  and  Establishment 83 

V.  Aurelius  Augustinus 100 

VI.    The  Germanic-Roman  Church 117 

VII.     Scholasticism   and   Mysticism 135 

VIII.    The  Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 156 

BOOK  II 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIANITY  SINCE 
THE  REFORMATION 

IX.  Renaissance  and  German  Reformation    .     .     .   175 

X.  Swiss    Reformation    and   Dissidents    .     .     .     .192 

XI.  Catholic   Counter-reformation 21 1 

XII.  Protestant    Sects 228 

XIII.  The  Period  of  Enlightenment 247 

XIV.  German    Poets   and   Thinkers 265 

XV.  Romanticism,  Speculation  and  Historical  Crit- 
icism      283 

XVI.    Reaction   and    New    Struggles 301 


INTRODUCTION 

/  In  these  lectures,  I  desire  to  present  the  evolution 
of  Christianity  up  to  the  present  dayJ  I  do  not 
mean  this  in  the  sense  that  what  follows  is  an  ex- 
cerpt from  the  history  of  Church  and  dogma,  a  sort 
of  outline  of  the  material  gathered  together  in  the 
text-books,  but  I  intend  to  emphasize  those  main 
points  in  the  history  of  Christianity  which  are  cal- 
culated to  show  in  what  way,  by  means  of  (what  con- 
necting links,  and  because  of  what  natural  motives 
the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament  became  the 
Christianity  of  the  present.) 

The  way  is  long  and  the  connecting  links  are 
many;  but  it  is  necessary  to  understand  this  way 
if  the  difference  between  biblical  Christianity  and 
ours  is  to  be  comprehended,  and  the  right  of  pres- 
ent-day Christianity  is  to  be  justified.  /That  right 
consists  in  being  the  legitimate  outcome  of  the  log- 
ical development  of  the  Christianity  of  the  Bible^ 
It  would  not  be  what  it  is,  if  Christianity  had  not 
passed  through  those  nineteen  centuries  with  which 
Church  history  has  to  deal. 

But  can  one  really  speak  of  an  evolution  ?  In  the 
title  of  the  lecture  itself,  a  problem  is  imbedded, 
and,  when  one  remembers  that  it  is  only  fifty  years 

9 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

since  Baur  of  Tübingen  seriously  treated  church 
history  in  the  light  of  the  idea  of  development,  the 
problem  refuses  to  be  ignored.  Not  any  of  these 
—  the  Catholic  church,  the  Protestant  church,  nor 
the  RationaHsts  —  had  taken  it  up  before. 

(Catholicism  did  not  treat  the  problem  because  it 
considers  Christianity  to  be  a  given  divine  factor 
and  foundation,  established  by  Christ,  through  the 
Apostles.)  The  dogma  of  the  Church  is  the  revealed 
and  unchangeable  truth  which  was  in  the  begin- 
ning and  (merely  becomes  more  and  more  clear  in 
the  course  of  time.  ]  The  establishment  of  the 
Church  —  the  Bishop's  Office,  the  whole  hierarchy 
rising  to  its  highest  point,  the  Pope  —  is  regarded 
as  a  foundation  of  the  Apostles,  and  by  them  each 
official  is  equipped  with  the  divine  power  of  a  rep- 
resentative. Changes  in  the  history  of  the  Church, 
so  it  is  put,  are  but  the  manifold  ways  in  which  the 
truth  and  grace  resident  in  the  Church  have  been 
attacked  and  are  ever  being  attacked  by  the  inim- 
ical world  and  the  devil.  The  Church,  however, 
repulses  all  attacks  and  remains  ever  victorious. 
Accordingly,  action  is  only  possible  exteriorly ;  with- 
in nothing  changes.  The  Church  remains  what  it 
always  has  been  —  a  divine  factor  implanted  com- 
plete in  the  world  by  God.  No  evolution,  no  sub- 
version within,  no  division  into  diametrical  op- 
posites,  is  possible  there ;  there  can  only  be  defense 
and  persistent  effort  to  maintain  externally  the  con- 
tinuity of  its  uniform  nature. 

10 


Introduction 

In  contrast  to  this  naive,  optimistic  mode  of 
thinking,  old  Protestantism  set  up  a  naive  pessi- 
mistic mode,  both  based  upon  the  same  presupposi- 
tions. In  the  latter  case,  it  was  the  "  Centuriatori  " 
of  Magdeburg  who  set  out  with  the  same  presup- 
position as  the  Catholic  historians,  that  Christianity 
is  offered /complete  in  the  New  Testament  by  a 
miraculous  revelation  from  God.)  This  offering 
consists  of  a  complete  institution  of  salvation  and 
redemption.  The  difference  between  the  two  is 
this:  While  Catholicism  regards  the  progress  of 
history  as  a  process  by  which  the  divine  nature  of 
the  Church  is  ever  achieving  a  completer  victory 
over  the  world,  old  Protestantism  reverses  the  mat- 
ter and  after  asserting  that  the  Christianity  of  the 
New  Testament  is  divine  truth,  asks  "  what  has 
become  of  that  Christianity?"  You  have  changed 
it  into  its  very  opposite,  it  says,  and  adds  that  the 
devil  has  not  attacked  the  truth  from  without,  but  he 
has  forced  his  way  into  the  Church  itself;  the  main 
article  of  justification  by  faith  he  has  eliminated, 
while,  as  for  the  formation  of  the  Church,  he  has 
had  full  play  so  that  in  the  Pope  himself,  the  devil 
is  the  "  Antichrist  "  incarnate.  Such  is  the  pes- 
simistic answer  of  old  Protestantism  to  the  naive 
Catholic  deification  of  the  Church. 

Old   Protestantism  naturally   found  itself  to  be 
in  an  attitude  of  self-contradiction,  in  tliat  it  took 
over  from  the  Church  which  was  held  to  be  per-— 
meated  with  and  corrupted  by  the  devil,  the  dogmas  • 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  first  five  centuries  and  believed  in  them  as 
divine  truth.  These  are  the  dogmas  which  origi- 
nated in  the  same  period  when  Church-customs, 
Church-ceremonial  and  Church-establishment  were 
in  process  of  crystallization.  (How  strange  it  is 
that  the  wicked  enemy  should  have  been  at  work  in 
the  customs,  establishment  and  certain  articles  of 
faith ;  while  in  others,  notably  those  most  important 
doctrines  of  the  trinity,  the  mortality  of  God,  orig- 
inal sin,  atonement  and  others,  he  had  no  hand; 
they  were  truth !  j  Such  a  contradiction  was  unten- 
able and  the  old  Protestant  opinion  of  Church  his- 
tory is  explainable  only  in  the  light  of  its  historical 
position. 

Rationalism  was  too  enlightened  to  hold  to  such 
a  transcendental  view  of  history  operating  with  the 
devil.  In  the  place  of  the  enemy  from  the  other 
world,  it  set  up  the  enemies  of  this  world,  the  cun- 
ning priests  who  established  themselves  by  decep- 
tion, and  thus  the  whole  establishment  became  a 
human  construction.  From  this  viewpoint,  the 
whole  church-history  seems  like  a  play  of  deception 
and  power,  a  play  of  human  opinion,  error  and 
failure.  Such  is  the  rationalistic  mode  of  think- 
ing. Here,  too,  there  can  be  no  thought  of  evolu- 
tion, (in  the  theory  of  evolution,  the  central  idea 
is  that  things  grow  from  their  beginnings  by  nat- 
ural necessity.^  With  rationalism,  everything  is 
merely  chance,  arbitrariness.  Unfortunately  this 
or  that  Pope  had  such  thoughts  fraught  with  am- 

12 


Introduction 

bition  for  power,  such  false  views  and  opinions; 
divine  truth  and  divine  direction  are  scarcely  ever 
to  be  found  in  church-history.  This  was  called 
"  pragmatical  writing  of  history,"  where  the  chance 
motives  of  individuals  were  brought  to  light  in  or- 
der to  find  the  spirit  of  the  times.  In  reality,  "  the 
spirit  of  the  times"  was,  for  the  most  part,  the 
spirit  of  the  men  themselves,  and  the  motives  as- 
cribed to  the  actors  were  inventions  of  the  his- 
torians. This  was  no  more  objective  than  the  pes- 
simistic treatment  of  Protestantism,  or  the  optimis- 
tic glorification  of  the  Church,  had  been. 
(It  is  plain  that  not  in  Catholicism,  nor  in  old 
Protestantism,  nor  in  Rationalism  had  there  been 
any  word  of  an  evolution  of  Christianity.]  This 
idea  of  development,  introduced  into  the  science  of 
history  since  Herder  and  Hegel,  and  generally  ac- 
cepted in  the  writing  of  profane  history  to-day, 
came  into  its  own  in  the  treatment  of  church-history 
through  Baur.  ^According  to  him,  Christianity  is 
the  religion  of  divine-humanity  —  the  elevation  of 
man  to  a  consciousness  of  his  spiritual  unity  with 
God  and  freedom  in  God.^  That  was  the  novelty 
and  peculiarity  of  Christianity,  by  reason  of  which 
it  stands  above  all  other  religions.  (This  new  re- 
ligious principle  was  in  Jesus  in  the  germ,  in  his 
pious  attitude,  in  his  active  faith  in  God  and  in  his 
pure  love  of  man;  but  it  was  enveloped  still  in 
the  Jewish  forms  of  the  messianic  idea  and  con- 
fined to  the  Jewish  people,;which  is  a  contradiction 

13 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  idea  of  a  divine-human  rehgion  capable  of 
embracing  the  whole  of  mankind.  In  order  to  rise 
to  the  full  consciousness  of  its  peculiar  nature,  the 
universal  religion  of  the  spirit  had  to  be ff reed  from 
the  narrow  confines  of  the  Jewish  national  and  legal 
religion.  The  apostle  Paul  accomplished  that  task,) 
but  in  doing  so,  he  entered  into  opposition  to  the 
Jewish-Christian  faith  of  the  primitive  congrega- 
tion. 

Thus,  from  the  beginning  the  development  pro- 
ceeded by  contradictions  and  the  whole,  pure  truth' 
was  never  on  either  side.  These  contradictions  had 
to  be  resolved  into  a  higher  unity,  which  was  found 
in  the  Johannine  interpretation.)  Similarly,  through- 
out the  course  of  subsequent  history,  each  new 
solution  became  the  germ  of  new  problems  and  the 
cause  of  new  strifes.  By  constant  division  into 
differing  tendencies,  each  of  which  was  relatively 
true  and  justified  in  its  own  day,  by  means  of  this 
development  through  contradictions,  Christianity 
has  really  achieved  what  it  was  in  its  original  idea. 
Such  is  Baur's  view  of  church-history  as  the  his- 
tory of  the  development  of  the  Christian  idea  within 
the  Church. 

To-day,  this  view  is  not  the  prevailing  one  in 
theology; fit  has  been  thrust  aside  by  the  Ritschl- 
Harnack  interpretation  of  church-history,  which 
might  be  termed  an  accentuation  of  the  old  Protes- 
tant pessimism.  Whereas  the  latter  regarded  New 
Testament  Christianity  as  perfect,  with  a  great  fall 


Introduction 

in  the  apostolic  period  which  followed,  Ritschl  and 
his  scholars  (find  the  perfect  essence  of  Christianity 
exclusively  in  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  as  described  in 
the  first  three  Gospels;  and  Ritschl  thinks  that,  for 
this  reason,  Jesus  the  man  must  be  accepted  as  God, 
because  he  alone  was  the  true  revealer  of  the  will 
of  God.)  He  holds,  too,  that  the  beginning  of  the 
decay  and  disease  in  Christianity  soon  followed, 
Paul  himself  having/distorted  the  pure  Gospel  of 
Jesus  by  admixing  the  Pharisaic  theology/and  the 
dogmas  of  the  sacraments,  while  John  distorted  it 
even  more  by  his  doctrine  of  the  divine  Logos, j 
which  became  flesh  in  Jesus.  The  Greek  philos- 
ophy thus  introduced  finally  brought  about  such  a 
complete  disfigurement  and  obscuring  of  the  purity 
of  the  Gospel  through  the  Church  fathers,  that 
Church  history  after  all  is  nothing  more  than  the 
continuous  process  of  "  the  sickening  and  profana- 
tion of  Christianity,"  the  true  essence  of  which  re- 
mained for  the  newest,  that  is  the  Ritschlian  theol- 
ogy, to  discover.  i'^This  radical,  pessimistic  judg- 
ment is  to-day  the  prevailing  view  of  church-his- 
tory and  claims  to  be  the  result  of  modern  sciencey 

It  is  no  pleasant  duty  to  swim  against  so  power- 
ful a  torrent,  but  it  must  be  done  where  convictions 
based  on  principles  are  involved.  As  briefly  as  pos- 
sible, therefore,  I  will  attempt  to  give  the  reasons 
why  I  cannot  regard  the  view  of  church-history 
just  described,  as  the  correct  one. 

Above  all  things  else,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  in 
15 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

direct  (opposition  to  the  idea  of  evolution,  which 
is  the  governing  idea  in  the  other  sciences.^  "  Evo- 
lution "  I  understand  to  be  that  becoming  which 
moves  according  to  law  and  strives  toward  an  end,  in 
which  everything  is  fruit  and  seed  at  the  same  time, 
(in  which  every  phenomenon  is  conditioned  by  what 
has  preceded  and  conditions  what  is  to  follow?)  If 
this  is  to  hold  true  of  history,  too,  there  can  be{iio 
absolute,  perfect  point  which  would  be  an  excep- 
tion to  the  general  law  of  conditioning  and  limita- 
tion^ by  time  and  .space.  Vj-east  of  all  is  it  possible 
to  find  a  perfect  thing  at  the  beginning  of  a  develop- 
ment-series,,  where  the  new  thing  in  process  of 
formation  is  naturally  related  in  closest  fashion  to 
that  which  was,  while  its  own  peculiarity  appears 
most  imperfectly.  The  development  out  of  the  old, 
therefore,  must  be  a  gradual  one,  the  original  en- 
tanglement giving  way  to  the  perfection  of  the  pe- 
culiarity. ^Thus,  we  no  longer  believe  that  when 
man  first  appeared  on  earth,  he  was  the  ideal  man) 
On  the  contrary,  we  are  convinced  that  at  that  time 
man  was  farthest  removed  from  his  ideal,  that  his 
nature  was  crudest  and  most  bestial  ;('^and  that  only 
after  thousands  of  years  he  developed  the  spiritual 
freedom  which  makes  him  man^  Is  it  likely  then 
that  to  this  general  rule,  confirmed  by  every  ex- 
perience of  life  and  history,  the  history  of  Chris- 
tianity should  prove  to  be  the  only  exception  ?  Can 
it  be  that  the  perfect,  pure  realization  of  its  nature 
existed  at  the  beginning,  while  all  that  follows  is  a 

i6 


Introduction 

sad  degeneration,  a  senseless  error  and  a  disease? 
I  confess  that  this  view  seems  to  me  to  contradict 
reason,  which  thinks  and  bases  its  thought  on  the 
analogy  of  experience,  as  well  as  on  pious  belief 
in  the  world-ordering  providence  of  God. 

However,  we  are  told  that  in  this  matter,  not 
general  presuppositions  but  certain  and  scientifical- 
ly-ascertained facts  alone  are  decisive.  Good,  let 
us  hold  to  facts, —  real  —  and  not  imagined  facts. 
At  once,  we  encounter  the  troublesome  fact,  that 
there  is  such  a  variety  of  answers  to  the  question: 
What  was  the  content  of  that  "  Gospel  of  Jesus," 
of  which  the  essence  of  Christianity  is  supposed  to 
be  the  equivalent? 

A  glance  at  the  "  life-of -Jesus  "  literature  of  the 
last  half  century  gives  one  the  impression  that  the 
old  disputed  question,  which  occupied  the  Apostle 
Paul  (II.  Cor.  ii,  4)  has  not  yet  been  settled,  but 
that  each  author  offers  a  different  Jesus,  a  different 
Gospel,  and  a  different  spirit  as  the  only  true  one. 
Is  a  man  not  compelled  to  suppose  that  these  authors 
are  offering  their  own  spirit,  their  own  gospel  and 
their  own  ideal  of  Jesus,  which  they  have  read  into 
the  Gospels  and,  with  pardonable  self-deception,  con- 
sidered the  outcome  of  their  historical  research? 
No  one  will  marvel  at  this  who  knows  the  nature  of 
our  source  books,  remembering  that  the  changes 
and  progress  of  the  faith  of  the  congregation  are 
recorded  in  our  Gospels,  the  strata  lying  one  over 
»nd  alongside  the  other,  with  the  original  features 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  its  Christ-picture  abundantly  adorned  and  re- 
modeled, beautified  by  the  supernatural  and  spirit- 
ualized into  the  ideal.  fWith  such  a  condition  of 
the  source  books,  not  one  of  which  goes  back  to  the 
time  of  Jesus  himself,  who  would  dare  attempt  to 
establish  with  certainty  what  the  historical  basis  of 
this  vari-colored  traditional  material  was,  what 
Jesus  himself  actually  believed  and  taught,  and 
what  he  said  and  did?  If  the  personality  and 
Gospel  of  Jesus  is  an  open  question,  not  to  speak 
of  it  as  being  the  deepest  enshrouded  point  in  the 
entire  history  of  Christianity,  one  cannot  find  there- 
in either  a  starting  point  or  a  norm  for  a  judgment 
of  the  essence  or  of  the  history  of  Christianity 7) 

This  difficulty  of  attaining  certainty  naturally 
does  not  shut  off  the  attempts  to  see  how  close,  at 
least,  we  may  come  to  historical  probability  in  these 
things.  I,  too,  have  attempted  this,  and  the  re- 
sults of  my  investigations  I  offered  in  those  lectures 
on  Christian  Origins  which  were  delivered  two 
years  ago  and  have  since  appeared  in  print.  I  may, 
therefore,  be  permitted  to  refer  to  those  lectures  for 
more  detail.  To-day  I  wish  to  pick  out  and  em- 
phasize only  this  much:  If  anything  of  the  Gospel 
story  may  be  held  as  valid  because  of  good  evidence, 
it  is  this,  that  the  kernel  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
was  the  (announcement  of  the  coming  of  God's 
kingdom;) and  that,  in  common  with  his  people  and 
his  contemporaries,  he  understood  the  same  to  be 
the  catastrophe  to  be  brought  about  by  the  mirac- 


Introduction 

ulous  power  divine  which  was  to  make  an  end  of 
the  existing  miserable  conditions  in  the  world,  and 
bring  about  a  new  order  of  things  in  the  people  of 
Israel,  favornig  the  poor  and  the  pious, — (^the  early 
realization,  therefore,  of  the  apocalyptic  ideal  of 
the  rulership  of  God.^  [The  presupposition,  how- 
ever, to  this  expectation  of  an  immediate  rulership 
of  God,  was  the  essentially  pessimistic  view  of  the 
present  world  as  a  godforsaken,  unredeemed  con- 
dition under  the  rulership  of  those  powers  inimical 
to  God, —  the  devil  and  the  demons, —  whose  ac- 
tivities were  seen  in  all  diseases  of  the  body  and 
of  the  soul,  and  whose  instruments  were  all  the 
oppressors  of  the  pious  —  the  godless  Jews  and 
the  heathen  Romans^  This  crass  dualism  had  been 
strange  to  the  earlier  religion  of  Israel.  In  the  last 
centuries,  however,  [under  the  influence  of  the  Per- 
sian religion,  and  amidst  the  perplexities  of  the  po- 
litical fate  of  the  Jew^s,  it  had  arisen  as  a  natural 
reflection  of  a  pessimistic  mood  which  despaired  of  "^ 
things  as  they  were  and  expected  salvation  only 
through  destruction  of  the  present  and  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  world  created  by  miraculous  divine 
power.7 

This  dualistic  and  pessimistic  mood  gave  rise  to 
various  kinds  of  apocalyptic  writings  as  well  as  to 
the  various  messianic,  popular  movements  with  re- 
ligious and  political  motives,  which  came  before  and 
after  the  time  of  Jesus.  In  Galilee,  during  the  first 
years  of  our  present  reckoning,  Judas  Gaulonites 

19 


y 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

arose  and  gathered  a  mass  of  followers  about  his 
messianic  banner.     Then,  in  Judea,  John  the  Baptist 
appeared  with  his  message  of  the  coming  rulership 
of  God  and  his  cry  for  repentance.    Jn  his  footsteps 
walked  Jesus  and  Hterally  repeated  John's  announce- 
ment of  the  coming  rulership  of  God.J  This  alone 
makes  it  certain  that  he  and  the  Baptist  and  all 
other  Jews  defined  this  idea  in  the  same  way.   Noth- 
1  ing  was  further  from  his  purpose  than  the  found- 
/  ing  of  a  new  religion,  the  proclamation  of  a  new 
'^  God,  and  the  abrogation  of  the  Law  and  the  Proph- 
ets.    Rather  did  he  [Jesus]  desire  to  fulfil  them; 
he  was  inspired  by  the  faith  that  the  God  of  his 
fathers  would  not  delay  longer  in  this  time  of  direst 
need,!  to  fulfil  the  promises  of  the  Prophets  to  His 
people";  that  there  would  be  an  end  of  the  present 
miserable  condition  of  the  world,   and  that   God 
would   bring   about   the   longed-for   salvation   and 
time  of  redemption.     The  preparation  of  His  people 
for  this  period,  Jesus  recognized  to  be  his  mission, 
as  John  the  Baptist  had  before  him.     But  the  man- 
ner in  which  he  sought  to  carry  out  this  mission 
was  entirely  new.     He  did  not  make  use  of  that 
threatening  note,  preaching  the  terrible  judgment 
day  of  God,  but  his  was  the  note  of  a  pitying,  con- 
soling and  elevating  lovd     He  pitied  the  mass  of 
the  people  whom  he  saw  mishandled  and  rejected 
like  sheep  that  had  no  shepherd.     His  heart  was 
moved  by  the  dire  need  of  his  people  and  his  heart 
pointed  the  way  of  his  prophetic  mission.     He  did 

20 


Introduction 

not  wish  to  separate  himself  from  the  unclean,  sin- 
ful mass  of  the  people  as  did  the  proud  Pharisees 
and  the  timorous  Essenes/nor  did  he,  like  John, 
fly  into  the  desert  and  wait  until  the  masses  came 
out  to  him,  but  he  followed  men  everywhere  :;he 
sought  them  in  the  schools  on  the  sabbath  and  in 
their  work  during  the  week;  he  had  himself  called 
to  the  bedside  of  the  sick,  in  order  to  heal  body  and 
soul  by  his  refreshing  word,  and  he  did  not  even 
disdain  to  sit  at  the  hospitable  table  in  company  with 
the  disreputable  tax-gatherers.  This  love  that  went 
out  toward  people,  that  sought  and  saved  them, 
—  this  is  what  was  new  and  peculiar  in  the  activity 
of  Jesus,  a  revival  of  the  best  spirit  of  the  Prophets, 
of  a  Hosea  and  a  Jeremiah,  intensified,  however,  by 
the  need  of  the  times,  so  badly  out  of  joint  and  so 
feverishly  strained  by  apocalyptic  ideas. 

Heroic  faith  in  the  nearness  of  the  divine  deed 
of  salvation  and  the  redeeming  rulership  of  God, 
and  the  urging  of  a  benevolent  love  to  begin  with 
the  salvation  and  redemption  of  the  individual,  were 
most  intimately  united  in  Jesus.  (^With  the  eye  of 
trusting  love,  he  saw,  even  in  the  sinners  rejected 
by  the  righteous,  a  glimmering  spark  of  good ;  in 
their  longing  for  salvation,  he  found  the  possibility 
of  the  same,  and  the  demand  upon  him  who  had  it 
in  his  power  not  to  extinguish  this  glimmering  wick, 
but  rather  to  fan  It  by  a  seeking  love,  by  a  consol- 
ing word  and  a  healing  deed./  The  obverse  of  this 
was  that  he   judged   and   condemned   with   sharp 

21 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

words  the  self-righteous  who  boasted  of  their  ex- 
ternal legality  and  were  merciless  toward  those 
laxer  in  observance.  (Against  this  system  of  legal 
deed-righteousness,  against  the  seeming  religion  of 
external  ceremonial  practices,  purifications,  denials 
and  sacrifices, —  against  these,  Jesus  used  sharp 
words,  because  for  him  religion  was  truth  only  las 
an  attitude  of  the  heart,  evidencing  itself  in  the 
moral  performance  of  the  good.")  In  truth  that  was 
a  new  spirit,  the  germ  of  a  new  religion  which  was 
as  far  beyond  the  Judaism  of  law,  as  it  was  beyond 
the  lawless,  naturalistic  heathenism.  Both  are  sur- 
passed by  the  religion  of  sacred  love  which  judges 
the  sin  and  saves  the  sinner,  which  recognizes  the 
will  of  God  as  the  unconditional  law,  but  carries  it 
inward,  so  that  it  becomes  one's  own  voluntary 
driving  power  of  love.  In  so  far  one  might  well 
say  that  in  the  personal,  pious  attitude  of  Jesus,  the 
religion  of  divine-humanity,  the  indwelling  of  the 
divine  in  the  human  spirit,  existed  in  germ.  Now 
this  must  not  be  understood  as  though  this  new  re- 
ligious principle,  the  first  dawn  of  which  we  per- 
ceive in  the  activity  of  Jesus  as  savior,  had  been 
in  the  consciousness  of  Jesus  himself,  at  once  com- 
plete knowledge  finding  clear  utterance  in  his  teach- 
ings, so  that  the  Gospel  proclaimed  by  Jesus  would 
correspond  exactly  to  the  true  essence  of  Christian- 
ity. In  order  to  make  any  such  statement,  one 
would  have  to  close  one's  eyes  to  the  most  apparent 
of  facts, 

92 


Introduction 

[rhe  fact  is  that  the  apocalyptic  expectation  of  the 
catastrophic  coming  of  the  rulership  of  God,  shared 
by  Jesus,  had  as  its  presupposition  the  crassest  dual- 
ism of  the  distant  God  and  the  actual  world  as  god- 
forsaken and  ruled  by  demonic  powers  —  a  dualism 
which  is  the  very  opposite  of  that  intimate  connec- 
tion of  God  and  men  which  is  essential  to  the  Chris- 
tian religion  of  divine-humanity. . 

The  fact  is  that,  according  to  the  apocalyptic  no- 
tion of  God's  kingdom  shared  by  Jesus,[that  king- 
dom was  to  be  limited  to  the  Jewish  people ;  there- 
fore, Jesus  regarded  himself  as  sent  to  the  lost 
sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel  only :  the  heathen  are 
excluded  from  this  kingdom  or  can  become  partak- 
ers of  its  blessings  only  as  dogs  get  the  crumbs 
from  the  tables  of  their  masters.  And  as  this  king- 
dom is  a  Jewish  national  one,  so  also  is  it  an  earthly 
condition  of  happiness,  promising  the  pious  that 
the  sacrifices  brought  now  will  be  repaid  a  hundred- 
fold by  corresponding  possessions.  Such  an  earthly, 
and  eudsemonistic  hope  of  reward  might  be  a 
strong  motive  for  ethical  deeds,  but  it  could  not  be 
a  peculiarly  pure  and  sublime  one.  j  That  such  a 
Jewish-earthly  kingdom  of  God  differs  from  the 
universally  human  and  spiritual  realm  of  God  of 
our  Christian  faith  is  certainly  clear  and  could  only 
have  been  overlooked  so  often  because  the  latter 
was  involuntarily  read  into  the  older  GospelsT/  (The 
Gospel  of  John,  however,  does  place  the  latter  in- 
stead of  the  former.)     It  cannot  be  said  that  this 

23 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

is  a  difference  merely  of  theoretical  point  of  view 
without  practical  religious  and  moral  importance, 
ffor  the  apocalyptic  expectation  of  the  early  end  of 
the  present  condition  of  the  world  and  of  the  mirac- 
ulous catastrophe  of  the  coming  world  naturally 
produced  a  tendency  to  flight  from  the  world  and 
hindered  participation  in  the  regular  observances 
and  tasks  of  human  society:  hence  the  undeniably 
ascetic  features  of  the  ethics  of  the  Gospels,  the 
demand  to  abstain  from  private  possession,  from 
working  at  one's  trade,  and  from  family  ties,  its  in- 
difference to  State  and  law  and  culturej  For  that 
time  of  the  great  crisis  and  the  powerful  struggle 
of  the  new  ideals  against  the  ancient  world,  those 
demands  may  have  been  natural  and  necessary,  but 
it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  the  permanent  high- 
est ideal  of  Christian  ethics  is  to  be  found  in  flight 
from  the  world  and  enmity  to  culture. 

Finally,  it  is  an  indubitable  fact  that  Jesus  did  lay 
strongest  stress  upon  theLinner  conversion  of  the 
law  into  a  moral  attitude,  though  he  did  not  thereby 
give  up  the  authority  of  the  entire  Mosaic  lawH 
but  he  did,  rather,  confirm  its  validity  to  the  last 
iota ;  he  taught  that  one  ought  to  do  the  moral  deed 
and  not  omit  the  ceremonial.  If  the  Christian 
Church  had  rested  with  this  view  of  Jesus,  it  would 
never  have  come  to  that  autonomous  morality  which 
alone  is  adequate  for  a  spiritual  religion.  \  It  is  the 
merit  of  the  Apostle  Paul  (who  is  to-day  considered 
the  destroyer  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus)  that  Christian- 

24 


Introduction 

ity  was  freed  from  the  fetters  of  the  Mosaic  law 
and  became  conscious  of  the  freedom  of  the  chil- 
dren of  Godj 

Whoever  considers,  in  open  and  unprejudiced 
manner,  these  actual  elements  of  Jesus's  announce- 
ment of  the  kingdom  and  his  ethics  according  to  the 
first  three  Gospels,  cannot  marvel  at  the  further 
fact  that  the  object  of  the  faith  of  the  Christian 
congregation,  from  its  very  inception,  never  was 
[the  earthly  teacher  Jesus,  but  ever  and  exclusively 
it  was  the  heavenly  spirit  of  Christ  —  the  Son  of 
Man  who,  according  to  the  apocalyptic  expectation, 
was  to  come  upon  the  clouds  of  heaven  to  set  up  his 
kingdom,  or  the  Son  of  God  and  Ruling  Spirit,  who, 
according  to  Paul,  was  sent  from  heaven  in  a  hu- 
man body  to  redeem  the  sinful  world  by  his  death 
and  resurrection,  or  the  Logos  and  only-born  Son 
of  God,  who,  according  to  John,  brought  life  and 
light  to  the  world  through  his  coming  in  the  flesliJ 
In  the  last  analysis,  all  of  these  are  but  different 
shades  of  expression  (of  the  personified  ideal  of 
God's  humanity,  which  was  from  the  beginning  and 
is  to-day  the  kernel  of  the  Christian  faitlV  That 
this  profound  idea  of  God-humanity,  which  is  a  uni- 
versal truth  forever  realizing  itself  throughout 
the  whole  of  human  history,  (^was  conceived  in 
the  mythical  form  of  a  one-time  and  unique  super- 
natural miraculous  figure,  was  certainly  a  defect,  a 
veiling  of  the  actual  truth,  but  it  was  in  no  wise 
a  degeneration,  a  destruction  of  some  better  knowl- 

25 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

edge  that  had  been;  it  was,  rather,  for  the  first 
childish  stage  of  development  of  Christianity,  an 
inevitable  form  of  garment,  an  essential  pictorial 
envelope  of  a  purely  spiritual  truth.)  This  envelope 
was  inevitable  because  the  new  idea  of  God-human- 
ity—  the  indwelling  of  the  divine  in  the  human 
spirit  —  stood  in  entire  contradiction  to  that  pre- 
supposed crassly  dualistic  view  of  the  world  which 
was  accepted  by  the  entire  ancient  world,  Jewish 
and  heathen.  (To  bridge  over  this  contradiction,  to 
overcome  the  ancient  dualism,  not  only  practically 
in  the  symbols  of  faith  and  observance,  but  also  the- 
oretically in  the  philosophizing  on  the  truth  of 
God-humanity, —  that  was  the  task  which  could  not 
be  performed  precipitately,  but  its  performance 
required  the  entire  development  of  Christianity 
through  milleniums  and  still  requires  itf) 

(it  is  also  indisputable  that  Greek  philosophy 
helped  in  the  performance  of  this  task;  that  the 
thoughts  of  Platonism  and  Stoicism,  of  neo-Pyth- 
agoreanism  and  Alexandrianism,  had  more  or  less 
direct  influence  on  Christian  theology.  One  will 
have  to  go  further,  even,  and  dare  to  propose  that 
the  wisdom  of  thoughtful  India  had  its  influence, 
too,  upon  Christianity.^  Not  only  the  legends  which 
Luke  relates  of  the  childhood  of  Jesus  have  most 
surprising  analogies  in  the  Buddhistic  and  Brah-  , 
manic  legends,  but  even  the  central  idea  of  the 
Christian  faith,  wherein  Deity  becomes  human  and  / 
humanity  becomes  divine,  had  its  home  in  India,  ^ 

2(^ 


Introduction 

whereas  it  was  entirely  strange  to  Judaism  and 
could  be  found  in  Greece  only  remotely  mentioned 
in  individual  myths  and  certain  philosophic  specu- 
lations. Granted,  then,  that  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  Christianity  was  due  not  only  to  the  con- 
tributions of  the  Jewish  prophets,  but  that  the  wise 
men  of  India  and  of  Greece  have  contributed,  I  still 
cannot  see  why  that  should  be  considered  a  destruc- 
tion of  Christianity.  "  Is  he  the  God  of  the  Jews 
only?  Is  he  not  also  of  the  Gentiles?  Yes,  of 
the  Gentiles  also  ",  Paul  said  in  his  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  (iii,  29).  (Ought  we  not  to  be  ashamed  to 
remain  so  far  behind  this  insight  of  the  Apostle 
that  we  recognize  as  divine  truth  only  that  which 
comes  from  the  Jews,  while  all  of  that  which 
comes  down  from  our  own  Indo-Germanic  an- 
cestors is  at  once  cast  aside  as  godless  error?)  a, 
at  least,  confess  that  that  seems  to  me  a  mucli  too 
narrow  and  petty  view  of  divine  revelation  and 
world-government  which  confines  these  to  the  Jew- 
ish people,  while  the  noble  Indo-Germanic  race,  our 
own  ancestors,  are  held  to  be  entirely  godforsaken 
and  all  their  wise  men  and  deepest  thinkers  outside 
of  the  Christian  sphere  are  held  to  be  merely  spirits 
of  error.// 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  sliow  that  this  in- 
fluence of  Greece  upon  the  Christian  Church  was  a 
disastrous  one  by  demonstrating  its  consequences  in 
a  series  of  appearances  of  disease,  which  were  la- 
beled with  such  names  as  "  intellectualism,   mys- 

27 


The  Development  of  Christianity; 

ticism,  moralism."  /Now,  I  think  that  the  intel- 
lectual, the  mystical,  and  the  moral, —  that  is  to  say 
thoughts,  emotions,  and  movements  of  the  will, — 
belong  together  in  Christianity  as  in  every  other 
religion,  but  that  the  special  temperament  of  in- 
dividuals and  of  nations  naturally  puts  the  em- 
phasis now  on  one,  and  again  on  another./  In  itself, 
there  is  nothing  symptomatic  of  disease  in  this  in 
so  far  as  one-sided  tendencies  are  mutually  com- 
plementary, as  always  has  been  the  case  with  Chris- 
tianity. The  Greeks  were  peculiarly  well  tempered 
for  the  philosophical  development  of  Christianity. 
Can  this  be  considered  an  injury?  Or  must  it  not 
rather  be  regarded  as  a  necessity  if  Christianity 
wished  to  enter  into  the  conflict  with  the  ancient 
world  of  cuhure?  If  the  Ritschlian  theologians  of 
to-day  permit  themselves  to  scold  the  Church  fath- 
ers because  they  were  metaphysicians,  it  is  first 
necessary  to  prove  that  the  Christian  religion  was 
capable  of  existence  or  is^still,  without  a  metaphys- 
ical view  of  the  world.  ,  It  is  true  that  the  Greek 
theologians  did  lose  themselves,  partially,  in  all  too 
subtle  and  artificial  speculations,  but  the  blame  for 
that  is  to  be  put  less  upon  Greek  philosophy  than 
upon  the  most  unphilosophic  mythology  of  the  be- 
lief of  the  community,  which  was  as  difficult  then 
to  harmonize  with  reasonable  thinking  as  it  is  to- 
day/ We  must  be  particularly  careful  not  to  over- 
look that,  upon  the  plane  of  the  ancient  dualistic 
view  of  the  world,  the  truth  of  the  Christian  belief 

28 


Introduction 

of /God-humanity  could  only  be  maintained  by  sav- 
ing it  in  the  miraculous  world  beyond  and  dressing 
it  in  the  mystery  of  a  half-mythical,  half-philo- 
sophical dogma./  In  this  shell  it  remained  pre- 
served until  the  souls  were  so  ripened  that  they 
could  grasp  the  pure  and  universal  truth  without  its 
covering.  In  the  meantime  the  pious  found  their 
way  out  of  the  dilemma  by  making  certain  of  the 
presence  of  the  divine  in  immediate  emotion  and 
in  the  symbolic  presentation  of  the  ceremonial. 
Such  was  the  nature  of  that  "  mysticism  "/without 
which  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  any  living  religion, 
and  least  of  all  a  God-humanity./  Whatever  there 
was  left  of  the  magical  in  this  —  and  some  of  it 
certainly  was  there  —  corresponded  to  the  unripe, 
childish  stage  of  development  which  could  only 
visualize  the  presence  of  the  divinely-spiritual  by 
sensuous  means.  This  can  only  be  called  disease 
by  such  as  hold  that  the  childish  non-differentia- 
tion between  the  spiritual  and  the  sensual  is,  in  gen- 
eral, a  disease. 

As  far  as  the  reproach  of  "  moralism  "  is  con- 
cerned, the  word  could  only  be  used  in  the  sense  of 
reproach  where  morality  was /separated  from  all 
motivation  by  religious  convictions  and  emotions. 
Nothing  of  this  shows  itself  in  ancient  Christianity. 
On  the  contrary,  from  the  very  beginning,  the  de- 
velopment of  Christian  morality  maintained  the 
closest  connection  and  an  exact  parallel  with  the 
dogmatic  thinking  and  the  ceremonial  mysticism,  j 

29 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

The  supernatural  sanctity  of  the  ascetics,  who 
thought  that  the  ideal  of  men  alUed  with  God  could 
only  be  striven  for  through  separation  from  the 
godless  world  and  the  mortification  of  all  sensual 
life, —  this  saintliness  corresponded  to  the  super- 
natural mystery  of  the  dogma  and  to  the  ceremonial 
action.  Throughout,  the  moral  power  of  their  as- 
ceticism was  religious  in  motive  and,  if  we  of  to- 
day call  their  action  one-sidedly  negative  and  fruit- 
less, /we  must  never  forget  that  they  were  sur- 
rounded by  the  decadence  of  the  ancient  world  and 
that  they  were  serious  in  their  attempt  to  live  up 
to  the  literal  Gospel  ideal  of  perfection. 

The  Roman  world  took  over  all  of  the  Christian- 
ity of  the  Greek  Church  —  dogma,  ceremonial,  and 
morals  —  but  it  also  added  a  new  and  important 
side,  (with  that  power  of  deed  and  inborn  ruler- 
ship,  the  Romans  have  built  up  Christianity  so  that 
the  organized  community  of  the  Church  has  re- 
peated the  pattern  of  the  Roman  State.  ;  The  earthly 
hierarchy  of  Church  offices,  reaching  the  apex 
in  the  Roman  Bishop,  was  intended  to  be  the  image 
and  instrument  of  the  heavenly  hierarchy, —  that 
world  of  spirits  reaching  its  apex  in  Christ.  As 
the  God-man  of  dogma  was  above  the  men  of  na- 
ture, so  his  earthly  organization,  the  Church  of 
many  members  arranged  hierarchically,  stands 
above  the  natural  world  and  is  in  contradiction  to 
that  natural  world,  just  as  tlie  saintly  is  to  the  sin- 
ful nature ;  there  is  at  the  same  time  a  claim  to  ruler- 

30 


Introduction 

ship  over  sinful  nature,  similar  to  that  belonging 
to  the  heavenly  ruler  of  the  earth-world.  The 
struggle  to  realize  this  ideal  occupied  the  mediaeval 
period;  the  actual  proof  that  it  was  unattainable 
and  that  its  effects  were,  led  to  the  breach  with  the 
earlier  churchly  forms  of  Christianity,  both  in  faith 
and  in  life. 

/.The  Reformation  of  the  sixteenth  century  was 
the  decisive  turning  point  of  a  new  epoch  of  Chris- 
tianity, not  a  return  to  primitive  Christianity,  for 
the  reformers  moved  further  from  its  ascetic  ideal 
than  the  Catholic  Church  ever  did.  /  This  change 
affected  the  kernel  of  the  Christian  faith :  the  God- 
humanity  was  removed  from  its  ecclesiastical  notion 
of  a  world  beyond  and  supernatural  and  was  drawn 
back  into  a  world  here  of  actual  human  living./  The 
Germanic  spirit  felt  the  immediate  presence  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  within  itself,  and,  resting  upon  this 
Archimedean  point,  it  began  to  lift  the  mediaeval 
world  out  of  its  grooves.  At  first  this  change  came 
about  immediately  in  pious  self-consciousness  cog- 
nizant of  its  own  freedom  in  God,  thereupon  fol- 
lowed a  new  formation  of  the  moral  world,  the 
family,  the  cultured  society,  and  the  state,  which, 
conscious  of  their  own  inner  divine  dignity,  cast 
off  the  ecclesiastical  fetters.  /  At  the  same  time  the 
old  Church  notions  of  the  godlessness  of  natural 
man,  of  the  supernaturalness  of  the  divine  man,  and 
of  his  one-time  work  of  salvation,  remained  in- 
tact.    However,  this  contradiction  between  an  in- 

31 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tellectual  captivity  and  a  practical  freedom  could 
not  long  continue.  / IThus,  the  old-Church  Protestant- 
ism was  followed  by  the  new  Protestantism  which 
broke  with  all  ecclesiastical  dogmas,  during  the  En- 

/  lightenment,  but  then  reflected  upon  the  hidden 
truths  of  the  Christian  religion  under  these  shells 
of  dogma,  in  order  to  realize  more  purely  and  more 

J  perfectly  than  before  the  truth  of  divine-humanity 
in  the  new  forms  of  autonomous  thinking  and  of 
the  moral  living  of  human  society.     Just  this  is 

/  the  task  of  present  day  Christianity  as  it  is  pre- 
sented to  us  by  the  natural  and  entirely  logical 
development  of  the  whole  of  the  history  of  Chris- 
tianity. 


32 


BOOK  I 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRISTIANITY 
TO  THE  REFORMATION 


CHAPTER  I 

PAUL  AND  JOHN 
APOLOGISTS   AND  ANTI-GNOSTICS 

The  question  has  been  asked  whether  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Apostle  Paul  has  been  favorable  to 
the  development  of  Christianity,  or  whether  it  has 
not  rather  been  harmful  in  its  effects.  In  our  day, 
not  a  few,  even  theologians,  hold  the  latter  opin- 
ion. The  reproach  is  made  that  Paul  vitiated  the 
Gospel  in  that  he  mixed  with  it  strange  material, 
Jewish  and  heathen.  True,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
Paul's  actual  teachings  of  Christ  —  as  a  pre-tem- 
poral  being  who  descended  from  heaven  to  earth, 
assumed  human  shape,  in  order  to  sacrifice  himself 
and  die  for  the  sake  of  the  atonement  of  humanity 
with  God  and  by  his  resurrection  to  overcome  death, 
through  his  spirit  to  make  man  a  new  man  and  the 
heir  of  eternal  life  and  bring  men  through  sanc- 
tified actions  into  community  with  God  —  were 
very  foreign  to  the  oldest  congregation  of  disciples. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  touch  very  closely  certain 
heathen  notions  and  customs;  the  notions  of  gods 
who  assumed  human  shape  and  wandered  about 
on  the  earth;  the  myths  of  the  suffering,  dying, 
and  resurrecting  god,   with  the  mythical  customs 

35 


The  Development  of  CHristiaaity 

by  which  each  individual  partook  of  the  life  of 
the  god.  Such  notions  and  customs  were  espe- 
cially pecuHar  to  Syria  and  CiHcia,  the  regions 
in  which  Paul  worked  as  a  missionary  for  fourteen 
years.  Is  it  not  very  easy  to  suppose,  then,  that 
what  Paul  saw  and  heard  in  those  regions  exercised 
a  certain  influence  on  his  notion  of  Christ  and 
Christ's  work  of  redemption?  Taking  it  for 
granted  that  this  is  so,  that  Paul  actually  took  over 
that  kind  of  mythical  notion  and  mystical  custom 
which  he  found  prevalent  in  Antioch,  and  that  he 
worked  it  all  over  in  a  Christian  sense  —  the  ques- 
tion we  must  put  to  ourselves  is:  Would  that, 
then,  constitute  a  serious  reproach?  Two  things 
must  first  be  considered. 

In  the  first  place,  those  heathens  who  were  to  be, 
and  wished  to  be  converted  to  Christianity,  could 
do  scarcely  anything  with  a  Jewish  Messiah.  There 
was  no  understanding  and  no  interest  for  it,  still 
less  for  Jewish  legal  forms  of  divine  worship;  and 
yet  as  Christians,  they  needed  certain  ceremonials 
of  worship  and  dogmas  of  faith.  From  where 
were  these  to  be  taken?  What  forms  of  faith  and 
worship  could  be  more  easily  understood  by  them 
than  such  as  attached  themselves  directly  to  their 
own  forms  of  faith  and  worship?  This  is  per- 
fectly natural. 

In  the  second  place  —  and  this  is  the  main  point 
^ —  it  must  be  remembered  that  Paul  did  not  simply 
take  over  these  forms  of  faith  and  worship,  and 

36 


Paul  and  John 

leave  them  as  he  took  them,  but  that  he  trans- 
formed them  into  forms  and  vessels  of  the  new 
Christian  spirit  which  is  equally  far  above  the 
worship  of  nature  and  the  worship  of  the  law. 
"  The  Lord  is  the  spirit  and  where  the  spirit  of 
the  Lord  is  there  is  freedom."  "  Christ  called  ye 
for  freedom,  therefore  stand  fast  and  be  not  again 
harnessed  in  the  yoke  of  slavery."  "  Everything 
is  yours  but  ye  belong  to  Christ."  "  The  spiritual 
man  judges  all  and  is  judged  by  none."  These 
are  magnificent  words  which  proclaimed  not  only 
the  liberation  of  Christianity  from  Judaism  but 
became  valid  for  the  reformers  as  the  magna  charta 
of  the  freedom  of  the  Christian  man,  and  they  re- 
main for  us,  even  now,  as  the  shibboleth  of  militant 
Protestantism.  Furthermore,  the  conviction  that 
the  Lord  is  the  spirit  led  Paul  to  the  conclusion 
not  only  of  the  freedom  of  the  Christian  man  but 
also  of  his  mystical  union  with  Christ,  his  inspira- 
tion by  the  spirit  of  the  Son  of  God,  which  is  at 
once  the  spirit  of  God.     Thus  he  says: 

"  Therefore  if  any  man  be  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new 
creature:  old  things  are  passed  away;  behold,  all 
things  are  become  new."  "  Yet  not  I,  but  Christ 
liveth  in  me."  "  For  the  love  of  Christ  constrain- 
eth  us;  and  he  died  for  all,  that  they  which  live 
should  not  henceforth  live  unto  themselves,  but  unto 
him  which  died  for  them,  and  rose  again.  There  is, 
therefore,  now  no  condemnation  to  them  which  are 
in  Christ  Jesus.     For  the  law  of  the  Spirit  of  life 

Z1 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

in  Christ  Jesus  hath  made  me  free  from  the  law 
of  sin  and  death.  If  we  live  in  the  Spirit,  let  us 
also  walk  in  the  Spirit." 

These  are  great  words.  Surely  the  heathen  knew 
something  about  an  existence  in  the  Spirit,  in  God, 
—  something  about  being  full  of,  and  impelled  by 
God.  But  in  what  sense  did  they  understand  it? 
Their  "  enthusiasm  " —  being  in  God  —  was  a  mys- 
tical orgy,  a  wild  delirium  of  the  senses,  an  obses- 
sion by  the  spirits  of  madness,  of  licentiousness. 
Now  this  whole  swarm  of  heathenish  demonic  spir- 
its fled  and  disappeared  in  the  face  of  Paul's  teach- 
ing of  the  Lord  who  is  the  Spirit,  the  spirit  of  truth 
and  of  continence  and  of  love.  This  Spirit  does 
not  show  itself  in  the  shape  of  moments  of  sense- 
less rapture,  but  it  reveals  itself  by  making  new 
the  whole  of  man  from  within,  transforming  him 
into  a  divine  mortal  and  urging  him  to  a  life  pleas- 
ing in  the  eyes  of  God.  Never  before  had  that  ele- 
mental power  of  religious  enthusiasm,  in  and  of 
itself  so  dangerous,  been  held  in  check  in  such  won- 
derful fashion  and  changed  into  a  spiritual  main- 
spring of  good.  And  never  before  was  the  un- 
trammeled  morality  of  the  God-filled  heart  raised 
so  far  above  all  merely  external  legality  of  a  wor- 
ship of  the  letter  as  in  the  case  of  the  Pauline 
teaching  of  the  Lord  who  is  the  Spirit.  In  it  the 
miracles  of  the  past  and  the  expected  miracles  of 
the  apocalyptic  future  were  turned  inward,  spirit- 
ualized into  a  continuous  inner  experience  —  into 

38 


Paul  and  John 

an  experience  of  the  pious  soul  itself,  of  that  soul 
which  is  suffused  of  the  spirit  of  Christ,  in  which 
all  natural  selfishness  dies,  and  which  elevates  it- 
self to  a  life  for  God  and  in  God  which,  strength- 
ened by  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  feels  itself  to  be  strong 
enough  amidst  all  the  weakness  of  the  flesh  to  over- 
come the  world  victoriously. 

In  such  case,  the  future  kingdom  of  God,  hoped 
for  by  the  primitive  Christian  in  his  messianic  be- 
lief, is  a  present  factor;  for  it  is  a  reality  in  the 
congregation  of  the  faithful,  who  are  moved  by  the 
spirit  of  Christ,  who  are  his  body,  and  who  live  his 
actual  manner  of  life  on  earth.  From  this  view- 
point, the  historical  Jesus  himself  simply  appears 
as  the  first-born  among  many  brothers,  as  the  proto- 
type of  a  humanity  united  with  God.  Now  I  ask: 
Is  this  all  actually  a  perversion  of  Christianity,  as 
is  said  to-day,  so  that  we  must  go  back  from  Paul 
to  primitive  Christianity  —  or  does  it  not  rather 
constitute  the  longest  step  forward  of  Christianity 
in  its  development  into  a  spiritual  religion  of  hu- 
manity? I  beg  of  you  to  consider  this  question 
earnestly. 

Naturally  it  is  true  that  this  move,  as  every  move 
forward,  had  to  be  purchased  and  was  bought  at 
the  cost  of  a  keen  differentiation  of  the  spirit  of 
Christ  from  the  Christ  of  the  flesh,  and  in  this 
minimizing  of  the  historical  life  of  Jesus  on  earth, 
there  was  undoubtedly  a  certain  danger  that  Chris- 
tianity might  evaporate  in  the  play  with  thought- 

39 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

pictures  of  speculative  fancy.  With  Paul  this  dan- 
ger does  not  really  yet  appear,  for  he  was  held  in 
check  by  his  deeply  religious  nature  in  which  this 
spirit  of  Christ  was  not  merely  a  mind-picture,  but 
life  and  truth.  With  the  Gnostics,  who  have  much 
in  common  with  Paul,  the  danger  became  clearly  ap- 
parent. The  Gnostics  were  inclined  to  follow  the 
lead  of  Paul;  his  contrast  of  spirit  and  senses,  they 
exaggerated  into  an  irreconcilable  contradiction. 
Hence  they  could  think  of  Christ  only  as  a  purely 
spiritual  being  who  had  never  been  a  mortal  man, 
but  who  had  merely  taken  on  the  appearance  of 
human  figure;  one  who  had  never  really  died,  but 
only  put  on  the  semblance.  Thus,  doubtless,  the 
union  of  the  divine  and  the  human  in  actual  living, 
which  was  the  essence  of  Christian  belief,  would 
have  been  placed  in  doubt  by  Gnostic  spiritualism; 
that  contrast  which  Christianity  essayed  to  over- 
come would  have  been  declared  invincible.  The 
Church  well  knew  this  danger  and  therefore  fought 
against  Gnostic  dualism  and  docetism.  The  object 
was  to  achieve  an  alliance  in  regard  to  the  person 
of  Christ,  wherein  the  two  sides,  the  ideal  and  the 
real,  became  one,  insoluble,  inner  unity. 

This  occurred  first  in  the  Christ  image  of  the 
fourth  Gospel,  which  the  Church  tradition  calls 
John,  and  which,  without  doubt  erroneously,  it  at- 
tributes to  the  Apostle  himself.  This  Gospel  writer 
strove  to  present  the  life  of  Christ  on  earth  from 
the  viewpoint  that  in  him  the  divine  Logos,  that 

40 


Paul  and  John 

original  mediator  of  all  divine  revelations,  had  be- 
come flesh  in  the  world  and  in  humanity  —  Jesus 
the  personal  revelation  of  the  eternal,  ideal  Son  of 
God,  full  of  grace  and  truth.  No  longer  is  the 
death  of  Christ  the  only  means  of  salvation,  of 
reconciliation  betvi^een  God  and  humanity,  as  v^ith 
Paul,  but  this  union  of  the  two,  of  the  divine  and 
the  mortal,  has  been  completed  in  the  appearance  of 
the  Logos  as  man,  and  it  is  continuously  revealed  in 
the  entire  divine-human  life  of  Jesus. 

We  might  express  this  fundamental  thought  of 
the  fourth  Gospel  writer  in  modern  form  somewhat 
as  follows:  In  his  image  of  Christ,  he  seeks  to 
visualize  that  religious  truth  that  God  does  not  stay 
far  from  man,  but  dwells  in  him  and  would  re- 
veal Himself  in  and  through  him,  and  that,  despite 
the  earthly  limitation  of  his  mortal  nature,  man  is 
destined  to  be,  and  is  capable  of  being  the  son  of 
God,  the  vessel  and  instrument  of  the  divine  spirit, 
as  well  as  to  feel  his  own  power.  In  a  word,  it 
is  the  idea  of  divine-humanity,  the  union  of  the 
divine  and  mortal  being  by  moral  self -surrender  to 
God  —  that  cardinal  idea  of  Christianity  —  in  which 
lies  the  contrast  of  what  was  new  in  this  religion, 
as  against  all  former  religions.  That  it  is  which 
was  first  brought  to  clear  and  new  expression  in 
the  Gospel  of  John,  and  that  was  never  lost  and 
never  can  be  lost  to  Christianity.  It  remains  the 
central  teaching  in  the  formation  of  ecclesiastical 
dogma.     But  it  must  not  be  concealed  that  the  man- 

41 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

ner  in  which  this  cardinal  truth  finds  expression 
in  the  Gospel  of  John,  suffers  from  the  same  diffi- 
culties which  became  apparent  later  in  ever  more 
oppressive  and  painful  fashion  in  the  formation  of 
Church  dogma.  Briefly  stated,  this  is  the  difficulty : 
In  Christ  the  oneness  of  the  divine  and  the  mortal 
was  to  be  typically  visualized,  and  yet  he  was  to  be 
placed  outside  and  beyond  all  the  rest  of  humanity 
as  a  divine  being  incarnated,  a  divine  person  de- 
scended from  heaven,  never,  however,  a  man.  This 
mythical  notion  was  actually  prepared  by  Paul,  and 
—  let  us  be  clear  about  this  too  —  for  its  period,  it 
was  the  inevitable  form  of  presentation  of  the  true 
idea  of  the  moral  process  of  union  of  the  divine  and 
the  mortal;  it  was  unavoidable  not  only  for  the 
congregation  of  the  simple  faithful,  for  whose 
understanding  there  is  ever  the  necessity  of  a  sym- 
bol of  the  spiritual  truth,  but  it  was  required 
equally  for  the  deep  thinking  teacher  of  the  Church, 
himself.  The  reason  is  simple,  when  we  consider 
that  the  presupposition  of  the  acknowledgment  of 
Christian  faith  was  the  consciousness  of  the  depth 
between  the  divine  and  the  human,  a  chasm  which 
was  first  announced  by  the  great  Plato;  that  was 
the  dark  foil  against  which  was  painted  the  Chris- 
tian pronouncement  of  the  union  of  the  divine  and 
the  mortal.  Therefore,  this  new  truth  could  only 
be  understood  in  this  form:  that  a  unique,  divine 
person  from  above  entered  into  the  world  in  the 

42 


Paul  and  John 

form  of  a  heavenly  and  earthly  being,  a  combina- 
tion of  God  and  of  man,  making  a  God-man. 

The  Church  dogma  of  the  double  nature  is,  in 
fact,  present  in  germ,  in  Paul  and  in  John,  but  with 
them  the  mythical  shell  is  transparent  and  the  truth 
of  divine-humanity  was  to  be  seen  much  more 
clearly  than  in  the  later  dogma.  The  Christ  of  John 
says,  in  his  farewell  prayer,  that  his  own  should 
become  entirely  one  with  the  Father,  as  Christ  him- 
self had  become  one  with  Him.  A  little  before  that 
he  promises  all  of  those  who  love  God  and  keep 
His  commandments  that  the  Father  will  come  to 
them  and  dwell  in  them;  that  is,  that  they  should 
become  such  God-filled  men  as  Christ  himself  is. 
Thus,  though  he  is  called  the  unique-born  Son  of 
God,  Christ  appears,  at  bottom,  to  be  the  type  of 
pious  man,  God-filled.  All  the  messianic  idea  is 
here  more  completely  done  away  with  than  in  Paul. 
Christ  is  king  not  only  in  the  messianic  Jewish 
realm,  but  in  the  realm  of  truth,  and  his  kingdom 
is  not  to  come  in  the  future  in  miraculous  fashion, 
but  it  is  actually  present  in  the  congregation  of  the 
faithful,  by  whom  God  is  worshipped  in  spirit  and 
in  truth.  Now,  compare  these  grand  thoughts  and 
expressions  of  the  Gospel  of  John,  this  truly  spir- 
itual view  of  Christianity,  with  the  words  of  the 
older  tradition,  with  such  words  as  the  unbreak- 
able validity  of  the  Mosaic  law,  or  with  those  about 
eating  and  drinking  in  the  messianic  kingdom  with 

43 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

the  patriarchs,  or  with  those  about  the  fabulous 
fecundity  in  the  messianic  kingdom,  where  every 
vine  will  bear  a  thousand  bunches,  and  every  bunch 
a  thousand  grapes,  and  every  grape  yield  a  thou- 
sand measures,  an  expression  which  the  old  con- 
gregation attributed  directly  to  Jesus.  Compare 
this  naive  Jewish  idea  with  the  spiritual  idea  of 
Christianity  in  the  Gospel  of  John,  and  then  judge 
which  side  has  the  higher  truth,  then  judge  whether 
the  Gospel  of  John  is  of  less  value,  as  some  people 
dare  to  maintain  to-day,  judge  whether  it  is  not 
in  fact,  just  as  Clement  of  Alexandria,  and  Luther 
and  Schleiermacher  said,  the  crown  oi  the  Gospels, 
in  truth  the  "  spiritual  Gospel." 

In  the  direction  indicated  by  Paul  and  John,  the 
Apologists  and  Church  fathers  of  the  second  and 
third  centuries  developed  this  idea  of  Christ  into  a 
worldly  view  which  was  well  suited  to  win  over 
and  to  convince  the  cultured  among  the  heathen. 
The  fundamental  thought  of  the  Apologists  is  one 
taken  over  from  John;  that  Christianity  is  the  full 
revelation  of  the  divine  Logos,  which  had  scattered 
the  seed  corns  of  truth  previously,  not  only  in  the 
Jewish  prophets,  but  also  in  the  sages  of  Greece, 
and  which  had  brought  the  fulfilment  and  perfec- 
tion of  these  partial  seeds  of  truth,  in  Christ.  The 
sense  of  this  Logos-dogma,  as  taught  by  the  Apol- 
ogists and  Church  fathers,  is  completely  misunder- 
stood if  it  is  thought  that  they  wished  to  change 

44 


Paul  and  John 

the  Gospel  into  a  philosophic  cosmology  and  drag 
it  down  to  the  service  of  a  knowledge  of  nature. 
What  do  these  Church  fathers  care  about  knowl- 
edge of  nature?  Were  they  scientific  in  our  mod- 
ern sense  ?  They  were  far  removed  from  any  such 
thing.  Their  purpose  was  to  fit  Christianity  into 
the  frame  of  an  all-embracing  worldly  view,  es- 
pecially of  a  tcleological  consideration  of  history. 
And  therewith  they  desired  to  make  clear  the  pecul- 
iar newness  and  superior  truth  of  Christianity  as 
against  previous  religions,  while  at  the  same  time 
maintaining  its  great  antiquity,  its  reaching  back 
into  the  very  beginnings  of  time,  even  to  the  origins 
of  human  nature.  Thus  they  did  not  minimize 
Christianity,  but  rather  they  showed  a  large  knowl- 
edge of  its  universal  importance  as  a  world  religion 
and  they  also  showed  a  noble  breadth  in  their  open 
and  joyous  recognition  of  the  good  in  the  pre- 
Christian  world. 

In  this  sense,  for  example,  Justin,  the  Apologist 
and  martyr,  said,  about  the  middle  of  the  second 
century,  that  all  of  those  who  ever  lived  in  com- 
munity with  the  Logos,  such  as  Heraclitus  and 
Sophocles,  were  Christians  before  Christ,  even 
though  their  times  considered  them  to  be  atheists. 
That  is  a  beautiful  expression  which  needs  to  be 
taken  to  heart  to-day.  The  Apologists  are  fully 
conscious  of  the  new  and  saving  significance  of  the 
Christian  revelation.  Tatian  gratefully  bears  wit- 
ness that  the  Christian  truth  was  for  him  a  release 

45 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

from  miserable  slavery,  a  release  from  the  fetter 
by  which  he  found  himself  hemmed, —  the  fear  of 
the  demons,  of  death,  and  of  the  dark  fate  of  this 
world  as  well  as  of  the  uncertainty  and  insecurity  of 
human  knowledge  demonstrated  by  the  contradic- 
tion of  the  philosophic  systems,  each  one  warring 
with  the  others.  The  Apologists  call  the  Christians 
the  new  third  people  which  stand  above  the  Jews 
and  the  heathen  and  represent  the  new  species  of 
humanity  to  which  belongs  the  future.  In  fact, 
there  are  tones  of  deepest  Christian  mysticism 
sounded  by  the  author  of  the  letter  to  Diognetus 
when  he  describes  the  Christian  life  in  its  contrast 
between  internal  and  external,  so  that  the  Christians 
externally  are  modest,  low,  poor  and  oppressed, 
while  internally  they  are  rich  in  God,  free  from  the 
world,  joyful  in  hope,  patient  in  sorrows,  active 
in  love.  Thus,  there  was  really  a  sound,  broad, 
truly  Christian  view  of  the  world  worked  out  by  the 
Apologists. 

As  the  Apologists  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the 
word  had  undertaken  the  defense  of  Christianity 
against  the  heathen  world,  so  Tertullian  and  Ire- 
naeus,  the  Church  fathers,  made  it  their  task  to 
defend  the  ecclesiastical  creed  of  the  congregation 
against  the  Gnostics.  This  new  front  placed  the 
whole  consideration  of  heathen  culture  and  philoso- 
phy in  a  polemical  position,  for  the  heretical  gnosis 
was  considered  its  fruit;  in  particular,  Tertullian, 
that  African  of  temperament,  who  might  be  called 

46 


Paul  and  John 

an  ancient  Rousseau,  being  such  a  bitter  enemy  to 
all  culture,  was  great  in  these  polemics  and  regarded 
with  hatred  and  scorn  the  entire  Greek  and  Roman 
culture  as  the  play  of  the  demons,  which  would  be 
consumed  by  the  fire  of  judgment.  Not  even  a 
Socrates  found  favor  in  his  eyes.  And  yet  that 
same  Tertullian  who  opposed  all  culture  for  the  sake 
of  the  one  truth  of  Christian  revelation,  was  he  who 
said  so  well  that  the  human  soul  is  by  nature  a 
Christian  woman,  and  that  at  bottom  Christianity 
was  nothing  more  or  less  than  human  nature  re- 
covering its  original  health  and  purity  which  had 
been  perverted  by  the  demons.  Irenaeus  worked 
out  this  thought  later  into  a  sort  of  Christian  philos- 
ophy of  history,  which  revolves  about  that  deep 
thought  that  Christianity  is  the  completion  of  crea- 
tion, the  fulfilment  of  the  destiny  which  was  in  the 
beginning  placed  by  the  divine  Logos  in  humanity ; 
namely,  that  it  partakes  of  the  divine  life.  Ac- 
cording to  Irenaeus,  Adam,  the  first  man,  did  not 
harmonize  entirely  with  his  divine  destiny,  there- 
fore he  succumljed  to  sin  and  guilt  in  order  to  be- 
come conscious  of  his  imperfection  and  to  become 
receptive  of  his  higher  destiny.  According  to  the 
view  of  Irenaeus,  the  history  of  humanity  was  a 
divine  education  of  our  species,  following  various 
steps  of  revelation  which  repeat  one  another  in  in- 
dividual men,  according  to  their  period,  and  which 
have  found  completion  and  termination  in  the  Logos 
incarnation  of  Christ.     That  was  the  second  crea- 

47 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tion  in  which,  for  the  first  time,  the  true,  divine 
nature  of  humanity  became  reaHzed.  At  the  same 
time,  the  reaHzation  was  accompanied  by  a  hbera- 
tion  from  the  God-opposing  powers  of  sin  and  death 
which  had  held  man  in  their  clutch.  In  Christ,  the 
second  Adam,  there  is  achieved  the  harmonious  uni- 
ty of  all  that  had  been  separate  before;  God  steps 
into  humanity,  God  is  recognized  by  it,  and  man 
becomes  conscious  of  his  divine  being. 

"  Therefore  did  the  Son  of  God  and  Logos  be- 
come man,  so  that  man,  receiving  the  Logos,  and 
receptive  of  its  adoption,  might  become  the  Son  of 
God.  By  his  birth  as  a  man,  the  eternal  word  of 
God  keeps  its  promise  of  the  heritage  of  life  for 
those  who  had  inherited  death  by  their  natural 
birth.  By  his  anguish,  however,  the  God-man  con- 
quered the  enemy  of  humanity,  destroyed  destruc- 
tion and  ignorance,  and  gave  to  life,  truth,  and  per- 
petuity.'' 

According  to  Irenaeus,  sah^ation  was  brought 
about  by  the  divine  Logos,  the  eternal  ideal  of  hu- 
manity, appearing  in  Christ  as  a  man,  and  in  his  life 
and  death  was  typically  realized  the  human  destiny 
to  communion  with  God,  Therewith  did  he  release 
in  the  human  species  that  power  by  which  it  might 
escape  from  the  prison  of  its  temporal  nature  and 
lift  itself  to  the  true  life  in  God.  This  was  a  Chris- 
tian philosophy  of  history  which  stood  far  above 
the  mythical  fantasies  of  the  Gnostics;  in  many 
ways  it  remnids  us  of  modern  thinking,   such  as 

48 


Paul  and  John 

Lessing's  idea  of  the  education  of  the  human  race. 
It  is,  however,  true  that  even  in  Irenaeus  there  are 
to  be  found  the  na'ive  hopes  of  the  oldest  Church, 
such  as  that  of  the  sensuous  glories  of  the  chiliastic 
kingdom  of  Christ  on  earth,  the  spiritual  interpreta- 
tion of  which  he  earnestly  avoided.  Herein,  as  in 
their  freer  attitude  toward  tradition  altogether, 
Clement  and  Origen,  the  Alexandrian  philosophers 
of  religion,  differed  advantageously  from  the  de- 
fenders of  the  ecclesiastical  rules  of  faith. 


49 


CHAPTER  II 

CLEMENT   AND   ORIGEN 
THE  ALEXANDRIANS 

For  centuries  Alexandria  had  been  the  classic 
spot  for  the  reconciliation  of  Greek  thought  with 
oriental  faith.  It  was  there  that,  about  the  begin- 
ning of  our  era,  the  Jewish  philosopher.  Philo, 
sought  to  bring  about  a  connection  between  Jewish 
law  and  Stoic  ethics  —  between  Moses  and  Plato  — 
by  means  of  the  allegorical  interpretation  of  Scrip- 
ture. At  the  beginning  of  the  third  century,  it  was 
the  task  and  object  of  the  Catechist  School  in 
Alexandria,  the  first  Christian  theological  institu- 
tion, to  bring  about  a  similar  connection  between 
Christian  faith  and  Greek  wisdom.  There  Clement, 
the  Christian  philosopher,  taught  Christian,  Jewish, 
and  even  heatlien  pupils  and  attempted  to  base,  as 
well  as  to  explain  Christianity,  philosophically. 
As  Philo  had  found  in  the  divine  Logos,  the  unity 
of  the  Old  Testament  revelation  and  philosophic 
reason,  so  the  same  idea  served  Clement  as  the 
foundation  of  the  philosophy  of  the  history  of 
religion,  which  makes  Judaism  and  Hellenism  the 
steps  leading  up  to  Christianity.     The  divine  Logos 

50 


Clement  and  Origen 

which  had  enlightened  man  from  the  beginning  (the 
Gospel  of  John  had  taught  this  too  J  had  not  only 
enlightened  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  but,  according 
to  Clement,  it  had  been  effective  among  the  heathen 
and  awakened  the  wise  men  of  Greece,  giving  them 
philosophy  as  a  guide  to  righteousness.  Jewish 
prophecy  and  Greek  philosophy  were  both  the  pre- 
paratory means  of  education  for  the  divine  truth  of 
the  Gospels.  In  Christ  appeared  the  whole  truth, 
in  Him  all  former  seeds  of  truth  were  ripened  and 
became  the  common  possession  of  humanity. 
Clement  says :  "  The  beginning  of  light  put  every- 
thing into  the  light,  now  all  is  Athens,  all  is  become 
Hellas."  Compare  that  with  Tertullian's  expres- 
sion :  "  What  have  Athens  and  Jerusalem  in  com- 
mon, what  the  Platonic  Academy  and  the  Church? 
We  have  no  further  need  of  a  desire  for  knowledge 
since  Jesus  Christ,  and  no  further  need  of  scientific 
research  since  the  Gospels."  Compare  these  two 
expressions  and  you  have  before  you  the  width  of 
the  chasm  between  the  optimistic  and  the  pessimistic 
notion  of  the  relation  of  Christianity  to  culture  and 
science  —  an  opposition  which  has  continued  to  our 
own  day.  Many  as  there  may  be  on  the  side  of 
TertuUian,  I  believe  that  we  hold  with  Clement. 

As  Clement  regarded  the  history  of  religion  as 
an  education  of  humanity  from  an  imperfect  to  a 
perfect  knowledge  of  truth,  so  the  development  of 
Christian  living,  regarded  from  the  same  viewpoint, 
appears  to  be  progress  from  mere  faith,  conviction, 

51 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

through  to  complete  knowledge.  While  he  does 
hold  faith  to  be  the  general  basis  for  all  salvation, 
at  the  same  time  above  faith  stands  knowledge,  the 
gnosis  which  understands  the  content  of  faith  and  is 
able  to  explain  it  on  the  basis  of  reason.  There- 
fore, as  an  indispensable  aid,  philosophy  belongs 
to  it ;  not  that  the  theologian,  the  Christian  gnostic, 
has  to  hold  to  one  certain  philosophic  system;  no, 
he  is  to  choose  the  best  from  all  systems.  In  fact, 
by  busying  himself  with  philosophy,  he  ought  to 
acquire  the  ability  to  think  through  spiritual  things 
and  to  recognize  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  tradi- 
tional faith.  It  is  this  knowledge  mediated  at 
least  by  philosophy,  if  not  directly  originating  in 
philosophy  —  it  is  this  knowledge  which  Clement 
seeks  to  harmonize  with  traditional  Church  beliefs 
by  the  allegorical  interpretation  of  Scripture. 
What  he  really  brings  is  a  very  free  criticism  which 
hides  behind  the  fiction  that  the  allegorical  inter- 
pretation had  continued  by  means  of  a  tradition 
which  had  been  conserved  as  the  secret  of  a  narrow 
circle,  but  which  in  the  end  may  be  traced  back  to 
the  Apostles.  It  is  a  fiction,  but  it  is  character- 
istic that  even  for  Clement  such  a  need  should  exist, 
that  the  truth  as  he  understood  it  had  to  be  veiled 
by  a  mysterious  and  ancient  revelation.  It  was  not 
different  with  the  Neo-Platonists  and  Neo-Pythag- 
oreans. 

According  to  Clement,  the  object  of  the  gnosis  is 
not  God,  but  the  divine  Logos.     God  Himself  is  not 

52 


Clement  and  Origen 

knowable.  He  is  not  thinkable  under  any  name  or 
any  predicate.  True,  we  do  use  beautiful  names 
for  God  in  order  to  avoid  erroneous  notions,  but  not 
as  positive  expressions  for  His  being,  which  is  far 
too  high  and  too  sublime  for  finite  terms.  For  the 
Christian,  however,  this  nature  of  God  is  not  un- 
knowable in  every  respect ;  it  reveals  itself  through 
the  divine  Logos,  the  instrument  and  image  of  God. 
By  this  Logos,  Clement  understood,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  universal  workl-building  and  world- 
governing  reason  in  the  sense  of  Stoic  monism ;  one 
might  say  it  is  God  from  the  side  of  His  activity  in 
the  world  as  creative  principle.  On  the  other  hand, 
agreeing  with  Philo,  he  understood  it  to  be  a  being 
which  differed  in  certain  respects  from  God,  His 
Son  who  first  gave  us  natural  life,  as  the  mediator 
of  the  creative  omnipotence  of  God,  and  who  then 
appeared  as  our  teacher,  in  Christ,  in  order  to  give 
us  eternal  life  through  knowledge  of  the  divine 
will.  He  is  the  source  of  all  divine  revelation  in 
the  natural  world,  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  world, 
and  in  the  Christian  knowledge  of  truth.  Thus 
Christ  is  the  prototypical  appearance  of  that  divine 
principle  of  the  true  and  the  good  which  was  active 
from  the  beginning  in  the  world  —  a  principle 
w^hich  completes  the  divine  destiny  of  the  education 
of  humanity  from  the  beginning  througli  all  history. 
Preparatory  steps  of  this  education  are  found  in 
Jewish  prophecy  and  heathen  philosophy.  It  was 
completed  in  Christianity,  but  there,  not  to  the  same 

53 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

extent  in  all,  achieving  perfection  only  in  the  Chris- 
tian who  knows,  the  Christian  gnostic.  It  is  said 
of  him  that  he  is  no  longer  driven  by  fear  and  hope 
as  the  simple  Christian  whose  belief  is  based  on 
authority;  but,  in  knowledge  and  love  of  God,  he 
raises  himself  above  all  earthly  things  and,  being 
himself  of  the  succession  of  Christ,  becomes  here 
the  godlike  man  freed  from  all  low  affects. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  this  ideal  of  the  Chris- 
tian gnostic  bears  a  very  close  relationship  to  the 
Stoic  ideal  of  the  wise  man,  as  portrayed  by  Seneca, 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  Epictetus ;  thereupon  is  based 
the  reproach  of  Greek  intellectualism  which  has 
been  cast  at  the  Alexandrine  Fathers.  In  all  fair- 
ness it  must  be  remarked  that  the  Stoic  ideal  finds 
here  a  Christian  deepening  through  the  love  of  God 
and  the  imitation  of  Christ.  Now  that  is  not  in- 
tellectual, but  Christian  thinking.  And  I  do  think, 
also,  that  this  Alexandrine  ideal  by  reason  of  its 
freedom  from  the  authority  of  tradition  and  its  in- 
dependent, autonomous,  religious  knowledge  and 
moral  conduct  of  life,  is  in  fact  an  ideal  which 
maintains  its  full  truth  and  strong  justification  in 
our  own  Christianity.  It  seems  to  me  that  when 
the  Alexandrine  Fathers  set  up  this  ideal,  they  did 
not  pervert  Christianity;  but,  from  their  high 
prophetic  watch  tower,  they  looked  out  toward  the 
future  development  of  Christianity;  from  a  distant 
past,  they  reached  out  their  hands  toward  the  great 
spirits  of  modern  times,  toward  Lessing  and  Kant, 

54 


Clement  and  Origen 

who  found  also  the  autonomous,  religious  and 
moral  personality  to  be  the  ideal  of  human  destiny. 
Therefore,  we  ought  to  cherish  a  sympathetic  rever- 
ence for  the  Alexandrine  Fathers  and  not  endeavor 
to  lower  them  by  derisive  blame. 

Origen  was  the  most  celebrated  of  the  disciples  of 
Clement.  In  his  eighteenth  year,  he  became  the 
successor  of  Clement  in  the  Catechist  School  of 
Alexandria.  Up  to  that  time  he  had  busied  himself 
with  the  science  of  language  and  with  scriptural 
exegesis.  Among  his  pupils  there  were  gnostic 
heretics  and  heathen  philosophers,  and  therefore  he 
was  forced  to  make  closer  acquaintance  with  phil- 
osophy; for  this  reason  he  attended  the  school  of 
philosophy  conducted  by  Ammonius  Sakkas,  the 
Neo-Platonist.  Concerning  the  success  of  the  phil- 
osophical studies  of  Origen,  Porphyry  reports  that 
while  Origen  did  make  great  progress  in  philosophy, 
as  a  Christian  he  falsified  all  the  good  that  he  had 
learned,  in  that,  while  he  Hellenized  his  teaching  of 
God  and  the  phenomena,  at  the  same  time  he  substi- 
tuted foreign  myths  for  the  Hellenic  material. 
Origen's  teaching  was,  in  fact,  a  mixture  of  Christi- 
anity and  philosophy.  While  philosophy  served  him 
as  a  means  of  defense  for  and  basis  of  Christianity, 
undoubtedly  it  did  also  have  a  determining  influence 
upon  the  content  of  his  credal  teaching.  It  ideal- 
ized the  traditional  notions  of  the  faith  of  the  con- 
gregation and  transformed  them  into  philosophic 
thoughts  which  were  in  part  very  distant  from  the 

55 


The  Developmeot  of  Christianity 

original  mythical  sense  of  the  congregational  tra- 
dition. On  the  other  hand,  the  philosophic  ideas 
which  he  took  from  Greece  were  bound  up  with  the 
tradition  of  the  congregation  so  that  naturally  such 
a  mixture  seemed,  to  a  man  like  Porphyry,  to  be  a 
falsification  of  the  Hellenic  ideas.  But  by  this  very 
alliance  of  philosophic  thinking  with  the  images 
and  legends,  popular  beliefs.  Origin  became  the 
founder  of  theological  dogmatics  (the  task  of  which 
always  was  to  harmonize  the  Christian  faith  of 
tradition  with  the  spirit  and,  as  far  as  possible,  with 
the  construction  of  the  present  age). 

The  Christian  faith  could  only  overcome  ancient 
culture  and  attract  the  philosophers  by  entering  into 
some  form  of  Greek  speculation.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  ancient  culture  could  only  be  preserved 
for  later  ages  at  the  price  of  an  alliance  with  Chris- 
tian faith.  If  the  necessity  for  such  a  historical 
process  be  recognized,  there  can  be  no  reproach 
against  the  Church  fathers  that  the  product  of  this 
mixture  did  become  a  very  imperfect  expression  of 
Christian  truth,  one  which  could  not  possibly  make 
pretension  to  infallible  authority.  Origen  never 
did  make  any  such  pretension.  This  claim  was 
made  afterward  when  the  theological  dicta  of 
official  councils  were  fixed  by  very  highest  sanction 
and  were  transformed  into  ecclesiastical  and  civic 
doctrinal  law.  Then  the  weakness  became  ap- 
parent, but  Clement  and  Origen  are  innocent  in  the 
matter.     They  had  no  such  intention.     They  dif- 

56 


Clement  and  Origen 

ferentiated  between  a  theological  gnosis  of  the 
progressives  in  the  congregation  and  the  simple 
religious  faith  of  ordinary  Christians.  Although 
they  did  hold  the  free,  scientific  knowledge  of  faith 
to  be  higher  than  unknowing  acceptance,  yet  they 
were  far  from  desiring  the  transformation  of  any 
deduced  formulae  of  scientific  speculation  into 
articles  of  faith. 

Origen  gives  us  these  golden  words  on  the  sub- 
ject :  "  What  we  consider  especially  high,  the  ideas 
of  the  philosophically  cultured,  we  dare  to  present 
in  our  public  utterances  only  when  we  know  that  the 
majority  of  our  listeners  are  persons  of  insight ;  we 
hold  back  the  deeper  things  when  the  auditors  do 
not  seem  to  stand  upon  the  proper  plane  of  insight 
and  seem  rather  to  be  in  need  of  the  milk  for  in- 
fants." How  much  conflict  and  confusion  would 
have  been  spared  the  Church  if  she  had  conserved 
this  principle  of  wisdom  and  patience,  instead  of 
forcing  all  under  the  yoke  of  dogma.  For  Origen, 
too,  the  veil  behind  which  he  hid  the  opposition  be- 
tween philosophic  thinking  and  Church  tradition, 
was  that  age-old  customary  allegory  which  was  first 
converted  into  an  actual  system  by  him.  As  the 
body  is  to  the  soul  in  man,  and  the  soul  is  to  the 
spirit,  so  in  Holy  Writ  the  literal  sense  is  to  the 
moral  sense,  and  this  latter  to  the  spiritual  sense. 
The  latter  contains  much  unworthy  of  God  and  use- 
less for  salvation,  for  example:  the  legends  of  crea- 
tion in  which  God  Himself  laid  out  the  world  as  a 

57 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

garden;  or  the  legends  of  Paradise  and  the  Fall;  or 
of  the  bodily,  visible  converse  of  God  with  the  patri- 
archs. These  legends,  all,  cannot  be  believed  literally 
because  they  would  drag  God  down  into  the  domain 
of  mortality.  He  is  convinced,  too,  that  some  of  the 
Gospel  stories  can  only  be  understood  as  allegories 
and  he  based  his  spiritual  interpretation  in  such  fash- 
ion that  it  reminds  one  of  the  modern  theory  of 
myths.  "  The  evangelists  have  not  actually  under- 
stood many  of  the  extraordinary  deeds  of  Jesus  and 
have  given  purely  spiritual  things  in  the  form  of 
stories;  they  preferred  the  external  to  the  spiritual 
truth,  so  that  not  seldom  they  preserved  the  spiritual 
truth  in  a  measure  in  the  garb  of  untruth."  That  is 
a  deep  thought.  With  it  compare  Plato  who  charac- 
terizes the  myths  of  his  popular  religion  as  ''  noble 
untruth,"  in  so  far  as  under  the  garb  of  poetry 
there  lies  hidden  a  deeper  truth  which  is  compre- 
hensible to  the  great  mass  only  in  this  form.  This 
judgment  upon  the  mythical  in  popular  religion,  in 
which  the  Alexandrian  theologians  coincide  in  prin- 
ciple with  Plato,  seems  to  me  to  deserve  more  atten- 
tion to-day  than  it  usually  receives.  There  would 
not  be  so  much  dispute  for  or  against  the  literal 
truth  of  myths  if  it  were  remembered  that  that  is 
not  the  question,  after  all;  they  are  merely  dresses, 
poems,  in  which  there  lies  hidden  a  deeper  spiritual 
meaning.  Regard  for  a  moment  the  doctrinal 
structure  of  Origen,  —  what  might  be  called  the 
first  Christian  dogmatics. 

58 


Clement  and  Origen 

According  to  Origen,  if  we  are  to  know  God  as 
far  as  it  is  possible  for  us,  then  we  must  lay  aside 
His  purely  spiritual  being,  everything  which  might 
be  an  imperfection ;  before  all  things,  then,  human 
affects,  finite  changes,  and  inner  contradictions. 
There  can  be  no  division  in  God  between  goodness 
and  righteousness,  but  righteousness  is  nothing  else 
than  order  in  the  evidencing  of  goodness. —  The 
omnipotence  of  God  must  always  be  thought  of  as 
directed  by  His  wisdom,  so  that  He  can  do  nothing 
unreasonable;  the  content  of  His  activity  is  at  all 
times  bounded  and  defined  by  this  limitation. 
Again,  he  offers  a  statement  bearing  great  conse- 
quences, namely:  the  one  in  which  divine  omnip- 
otence is  identified  with  the  reasonable  world 
order,  so  that  one  cannot  think  of  it  as  an  unhmited 
activity  or  an  activity  in  which  there  is  the  possi- 
bility of  everything  absurd,  as  is  the  popular  notion. 
The  omnipotence  of  God  is  the  omnipotence  of 
perfect,  reasonable  spirit,  through  and  through 
guided  by  reasoned  thoughts  which  reveal  them- 
selves in  the  ordered  and  unbreakable  laws  of  the 
world  order.  The  revelation  of  God  is  mediated 
by  the  Logos  which  is  *'  the  eternally  generated  son 
who  differs  personally  from  the  Father,  who  is 
subordinate  to  Him  and  is  at  the  same  time  a  par- 
ticipator in  His  eternal  divine  being/'  Origen 
made  the  Logos  more  decidedly  independent  of  God 
than  had  formerly  been  the  case,  a  separate  person- 
ality.    That   was  an  entirely  natural   consequence 

59 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  longstanding  identification  of  the  Logos  with 
Jesus  in  the  Church  faith.  Yet  it  was  a  fateful 
move,  this  personification  by  which  was  made  a 
beginning  of  all  of  those  deduced  speculations 
concerning  the  inner  Divine  Being, —  speculations 
which  led  to  the  manifold  contradictions  in  the 
dogma  of  the  Trinity,  concerning  which  we  shall 
have  more  to  say  later.  That  same  relationship  of 
equality  of  being  and  of  dependence  holds  in  the 
relationship  of  Son  and  Spirit.  This,  too,  is  an 
independent  hypostasis,  subordinate  to  both,  yet  di- 
vine in  being;  so  that  the  One  Divine  Being  divides 
Itself  into  three  divine  hypostases  differing  in 
activity,  three  hypostases  which  bear  the  relation 
of  three  concentric  circles  to  one  another.  The 
activity  of  the  Father  permeates  the  entire  world  of 
being;  the  activity  of  the  Son  includes  all  reasoning 
creation;  the  activity  of  the  Spirit  is  concerned  with 
the  saints  of  the  Christian  congregation.  Such  is 
the  so-called  modalistic  or  economic  dogma  of  the 
Trinity.  As  power,  God  is  being  in  all  being,  as 
reason  in  everything  reasonable,  as  goodness  in  the 
saints  of  the  congregation. 

Following  the  Bible,  the  Church  before  and  after 
Origen  considered  the  creation  of  the  world  as 
something  begun  in  time.  Origen  cannot  accept 
this  because  it  would  contradict  the  unchangeable 
omnipotence  of  God  if  at  any  time  there  had  been 
no  object  for  God's  activity.  That  would  contradict 
the    unchangeability   of   the    Divine   Being,    which 

60 


Clement  and  Origen 

means  that  His  omnipotence  is  ever  active  and  His 
goodness  ever  going  forth.  According  to  Origen, 
every  world  has  a  beginning  and  an  end,  but  the 
series  of  finite  worlds  is  itself  infinite,  without  be- 
ginning and  without  end.  There  was  ever  a  world, 
though  not  ours,  and  there  never  will  be  a  time 
when  there  is  no  world.  The  Stoics  taught 
similarly  but  they  thought  of  an  unending  return  of 
all  that  had  been,  a  view  held  by  Nietszche  in  our 
own  day.  But  it  is  not  thus  that  Origen  thinks. 
He  holds  to  a  series  of  worlds  following  one  upon 
the  other  —  the  one  rising  a  step  higher  than  the 
other,  representing  thus  a  teleological  development 
so  that  every  later  world  brings  to  ripeness  the  seeds 
that  were  imbedded  in  the  former  and  itself  pre- 
pares the  seed  for  that  which  is  to  follow.  That  is 
a  splendid  thought  which,  mutatis  mutandis,  can  be 
compared  to  the  modern  theory  of  evolution. 

However,  what  is  the  driving  force  of  this  end- 
less becoming  and  disappearing  and  the  reason  for 
the  present  being  of  the  world  as  it  is?  It  is  not 
any  blind  force  of  nature,  not  any  physical  neces- 
sity, but  rather  the  moral  character  of  creatures  as 
expressed  in  their  freedom.  Fichte's  idealism  re- 
minds one  of  this  turn  in  Origen's  teaching  of  crea- 
tion. Origen  explains  it  more  in  detail  as  follows : 
The  inequality  of  the  creatures  cannot  have  its  basis 
in  divine  righteousness  which  is  a  law  of  equality 
for  all ;  the  basis  must  be  in  the  creature.  There, 
however,  it  is  only  freedom  by  which  there  is  any 

6i 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

possibility  of  change  and  of  manifold  development; 
that  is  the  reason  why  the  different  creatures  have 
different  places  in  the  world  of  phenomena.  Origi- 
nally, all  souls  are  equal,  but  by  reason  of  their 
freedom,  they  grow  cold  in  their  love  to  God ;  they 
become  idle  in  their  conservation  of  the  good ;  they 
sink  more  or  less  by  reason  of  the  weight  of  their 
earthly  body,  and  thus  they  remove  themselves  fur- 
ther and  further  from  their  divine  origin.  To  each 
belongs  that  place  in  the  world  corresponding  to 
its  moral  worth.  Here  there  is  no  predestination 
by  groundless  divine  decrees,  but  each  is  the  forger 
of  his  own  fortune :  the  darkness  of  earthly  fate  be- 
comes the  light  of  the  moral  world  order.  But  how 
does  this  teaching,  which  Origen  took  over  from 
Plato  —  whether  Indian  influences  were  active  here 
too  need  not  be  discussed  —  harmonize  with  that 
Biblical  tradition?  Origen  knows  an  answer. 
Paradise  was  not  actually  meant,  for  God  would 
not  plant  a  garden  like  a  peasant.  It  must  be  an 
allegory.  And  that  allegory,  of  course,  stands  for 
the  ideal  condition  of  the  soul  in  its  celestial  pre- 
existence. 

Then  too,  the  Fall,  as  it  is  described  in  the  Bible, 
is  impossible  and  unbelievable.  That,  too,  is  an 
allegory  and  means  the  individual  fall  of  each  soul 
from  the  world  of  mind  into  the  sense  world  of 
phenomena.  The  fallen  souls  have  not  lost  their 
divine  tendency  but  —  the  Church  accepts  this  too, 
—  they  have  succumbed  to  the  power  of  the  senses 

62 


Clement  and  Origen 

while  retaining  their  essential  freedom  and  the  pos- 
sibility of  betterment.  Even  the  demons  can  better 
themselves.  The  whole  of  the  history  of  the  world 
serves  the  divine  education  of  humanity  for  the  pur- 
pose of  its  spiritual  clarification,  freedom  from  the 
fetters  of  sensuality  and  from  the  tyranny  of 
demons.  This  education  achieves  its  goal  in  the 
incarnation  of  the  Logos.  In  this  matter,  too, 
Origen  was  the  first  to  fix  certain  thoughts.  He 
says  that  the  soul  of  Jesus  was  at  first  like  other 
souls,  but  since  it  alone  clung  to  the  Logos  in  un- 
changeable love,  it  became  one  with  the  Logos  so 
that  it  took  on  his  being;  that  is,  it  became  deified 
and  thereby  the  body  which  it  took  on  participated  in 
supernatural  qualities.  Incarnation,  then,  is  the  eth- 
ical process  by  which  the  divine  Logos  becomes  one 
with  a  morally  pure  human  person,  which  may  be 
regarded  as  the  realization  of  the  universal  ideal  of 
God-humanity,  differing  only  in  degree  from  the 
Logos  which  dwelt  in  the  prophets  and  the  pious 
generally.  Salvation  consists  in  the  imitation  of 
this  process  in  all  those  who  believe  in  the  Gospels : 
"  In  Jesus  the  union  of  the  divine  and  human 
nature  had  its  beginning ;  by  its  community  with  the 
divine,  human  nature  was  to  become  divine  and  that 
not  alone  in  Jesus  but  in  all  of  those  who,  by  their 
faith,  achieve  a  conduct  of  life  such  as  Jesus  taught, 
rising  thus  to  a  community  with  and  friendship  of 
God."  This  sentence  shows  that  Origen  not  only 
did  not  think  of  an  intellectual  or  even  physical 

63 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

deification,  but  did  think  of  an  elevation  of  the 
human  spirit  and  a  union  with  the  divine  essentially 
related  to  him,  mediated  entirely  by  morals.  Orig- 
en  did  not  wish  to  set  up  any  dogma  concerning 
the  work  of  salvation,  but  he  conceded  to  various 
views  a  relative  truth  according  to  the  needs  of  men. 
He  said :  ''  For  different  souls,  Christ  is  the  way, 
the  physician,  the  door,  the  lamb  of  God,  the  high 
priest.  On  every  plane  of  reasoning  creatures  is 
He  all  things  to  all.  He  became  flesh  in  order  that 
those  who  could  not  see  Him  as  pure  Logos  might 
comprehend  Him.  Blessed  are  those  men,  how- 
ever, who  have  arrived  at  that  stage  at  which  they 
no  longer  need  Christ  as  physician  or  Savior,  but 
only  as  the  Logos  and  the  truth." 

As  with  Clement,  here  too,  the  Christian  ideal  is 
that  personality  which  has  become  autonomous 
through  a  moral  taking  on  of  the  truth.  Several 
steps  of  the  Christian  life  lead  to  this  goal.  First 
of  these  is  the  faith  of  authority:  fear  and  hope  are 
here  the  motives  of  an  unfree  obedience  and  here 
the  sacraments  are  necessary  as  symbols  of  the 
spiritual  for  the  senses.  Above  that  rises  the  know- 
ing spirit  to  the  free  love  of  God  which  strives  be- 
yond the  external  laws  to  perfection  through  moral 
purification  and  self-discipline.  The  souls  thus 
purified  arrive  in  Paradise,  that  is  they  achieve  the 
spiritual  condition  of  perfect  purity  and  bliss  in 
unity  with  God.  In  this  teaching  there  is  no  place 
for  any  resurrection  of  the  flesh  nor  for  the  chil- 

64 


Clement  and  Origen 

iastlc  kingdom  of  Christ  on  earth.  In  the  place  of 
the  latter  comes  the  great  thought  of  a  general 
kingdom  of  God  wherein  all  peoples  Greek  and 
Roman  and  barbarian  shall  be  united  by  a  common 
morality  and  a  common  religion,  a  realm  in  which 
there  shall  be  no  oppression  by  force,  but  a  free 
moral  community  in  which  all  are  governed  by  the 
Logos  and  in  which  those  who  excel  in  piety  and 
wisdom  shall  draw  up  the  others  and  lead  them  on 
to  a  life  pleasing  to  God.  Such  is  the  Christian 
interpretation  of  Plato's  ideal  state  and  of  the  Stoic 
thought  of  a  universal  kingdom  of  God  governed 
by  the  Logos.  As  Seneca  says,  In  regno  (Dei) 
nati  sumuSj  Deo  parere  libertas  est.  In  this  Alex- 
andrine theology,  the  sensual  mythology  and  future 
hopes  of  early  Christianity  were  as  far  spiritualized 
and  moralized  as  was  possible  on  the  ground  of  the 
Church  faith. 

The  best  thoughts  of  Greek  philosophy  were  here 
united  with  the  moral  earnestness  and  all-encom- 
passing love  of  humanity  of  the  Gospels,  in  such 
fashion  that  they  became  the  common  property  of 
Christian  theology  and  of  the  Church. 


CHAPTER  III 

DOGMA   AND   MORALS 

The  development  of  the  Church  dogmas  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  natures  of  Christ  followed  the  lines 
of  the  theology  of  Origen.  Naturally,  I  cannot  tell 
here  the  complicated  story  of  the  disputes  over  these 
dogmas.  You  can  learn  them  from  any  history  of 
the  Church  or  of  dogma.  However,  I  will  attempt 
to  outline  the  gist  of  the  matter  in  dispute. 

The  Church  sought  to  visualize,  in  the  person  of 
Christ,  the  essence  of  the  Christian  faith,  that  is  the 
unity  and  community  of  life  of  God  and  of  men. 
This  gave  rise  to  the  question :  How  is  the  divine  in 
Christ,  designated  Logos  from  the  time  of  the  Gos- 
pel of  John,  related  to  the  One  God,  the  Creator 
of  the  world,  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament  re- 
ligions ?  To  this,  those  who  emphasized  God  as  the 
one  and  only  Ruler,  and  were,  therefore,  called 
Monarchians,  replied  that  the  Logos  is  really  not  a 
personality  differentiated  from  God,  but  is  His  own 
reason  and  wisdom  which  shows  its  power  and 
demonstrates  its  activity  in  individual  men,  as  of  old 
in  the  Prophets,  so  especially  in  Jesus.  In  another 
instance,  expressed  in  this  way:  Father,  Son,  and 
Ghost  are  three  forms  of  revelation  in  which  the 

66 


Dogma  and  Morals 

One  Being,  the  Deity,  projected  Itself  into  the 
world  as  a  phenomenon.  This  might  be  compared 
with  an  actor  who  appears  in  various  roles  though 
he  be  only  one  person.  Originally,  the  word 
"  person "  was  the  designation  of  the  role  of  an 
actor.  According  to  them,  the  Deity  revealed  Itself 
in  various  roles.  But  this  monarchian  view  seemed 
not  to  give  sufficient  emphasis  to  the  peculiar  dignity 
and  sublimity  of  Christianity  above  the  other  pre- 
Christian  religions.  On  this  account,  the  Apolo- 
gists thought  of  the  Logos  as  originally  dwelling  in 
God  as  His  own  reason,  but  then  stepping  out  be- 
fore the  creation  of  the  world  and  becoming  His 
Son,  the  mediator  of  divine  revelations  and  the 
subject  of  incarnation.  This  view,  however,  re- 
minds us  in  too  suspicious  fashion  of  the  Gnostic 
phantasies  of  emanations,  outpourings  from  the 
essence  of  the  Deity,  which  did  not  seem  harmoniz- 
able  with  the  sublimity  and  unchangeability  of  the 
One  God  of  the  Old  Testament  religion.  Hence 
Origen  taught :  The  Logos  is  a  special  person  differ- 
ing from  the  Father,  who  did  not  become  in  time, 
but  He  was  eternally  born  of  the  being  of  His 
Father.  This,  however,  must  never  be  regarded  as 
a  physical  process,  but  as  a  purely  spiritual  and 
eternal  relation  of  dependence,  just  as  the  sun 
always  produces  light.  Such  is  the  formula  of 
Origen.  This  formula,  too,  gave  rise  to  new  and 
long-winded  disputes.  Arius,  the  Alexandrian  pres- 
byter, found  this  notion  of  an  eternally  produced 

(^1 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Son  contradictory  and  not  harmonizable  with  the 
strict  conception  of  God.  He  opined  that  eternity 
might  be  predicated  of  the  One  God  alone,  the  One 
who  Himself  never  became,  the  Creator  of  all 
things,  hence  also  the  Creator  of  His  Son,  whom 
He  once  created  in  time  as  His  instrument, — 
created,  however,  before  the  creation  of  the  world. 
Therefore,  according  to  Arius,  the  Son  is  not  eternal 
and  born  of  the  nature  of  the  Father,  but  is  rather  a 
creature  of  God,  who  became  in  time.  In  a  word, 
he  is  ranged  in  the  series  of  creatures,  he  is  not  a 
divine  but  a  finite  being,  a  creature.  Ahhough  he 
was  elevated  by  his  moral  attributes  to  a  hkeness 
to  God,  yet  he  was  not  eternal  and  not  equal  to  God. 
According  to  Arius  the  Son  is  a  kind  of  demi-God, 
an  antique  Eros. 

This  teaching  of  Arius  was  condemned  as  wicked 
heresy  by  his  Bishop,  Alexander,  and  by  the  other 
Egyptian  Bishops.  On  the  other  hand,  many 
Asiatic  Bishops  heartily  agreed  with  it.  The  result 
was  a  lively  dispute  in  the  Church,  particularly  in 
the  Orient,  whereby  a  split  in  the  Church  threatened. 
This  was  very  bad  for  the  Emperor  Constant! ne. 
At  that  time  he  had  turned  officially  as  the  first 
Roman  Emperor,  to  Christianity  and  placed  himself 
in  the  position  of  the  protecting  patron  of  the 
Church.  This  was  not  done  through  piety,  but  be- 
cause he  found  it  a  useful  means  for  binding  all  the 
strands,  in  his  endeavors  toward  political  unifica- 
tion.    This  made  a  unity  in  the  Church  necessary 

68 


Dogma  and  Morals 

above  all  things.  This  explains  why  the  Emperor 
tried  to  end  these  disputes  in  friendly  fashion  at 
first,  admonishing  the  theologians  to  harmony  and 
begging  them  to  desist  from  their  quarrels  and  come 
to  an  understanding.  He  underestimated  the  bear- 
ing of  this  question  and  his  wishes  were,  therefore, 
not  heeded.  Consequently,  he  called  a  general  gath- 
ering of  the  Bishops  at  Nice  in  the  year  325.  He 
opened  the  proceedings  with  an  address  in  which 
he  advised  them  to  come  to  an  agreement.  At  this 
Council,  finally,  after  much  hesitation,  the  teaching 
of  Arius  was  condemned  and  the  identity  of  the 
nature  of  the  Son  with  the  Father,  homousie,  pro- 
claimed to  be  the  only  correct  dogma  of  the  Church. 
The  pressure  brought  to  bear  by  the  Emperor  may 
have  been  the  reason  why  the  very  great  majority 
of  the  Bishops  agreed  to  this  Nicene  confession  of 
faith.  But  it  would  be  very  superficial  to  trace 
back  the  victoiy  of  the  Catholic  confession  of  faith 
to  such  an  external  cause  alone.  At  bottom  there 
were  religious  interests  at  stake  in  this  decision ;  the 
name  of  Athanasius,  the  great  Alexandrian  theo- 
logian, proves  that.  As  a  young  man,  he  had  been 
at  Nice  and  during  five  decades,  thereafter,  he  con- 
ducted a  long  and  varying  struggle  as  the  chief  op- 
ponent of  the  Arian  dogma  and  defender  of  the 
Catholic  belief  in  the  homoiisic  of  the  Son. 

The  greatness  of  this  man,  who,  despite  years 
of  calumny,  persecution,  and  fears  for  his  life,  of- 
fered himself  in  order  to  achieve  the  victory  of  his 

69 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

faith, —  the  greatness  of  this  world-historical  char- 
acter is  never  properly  realized  when  it  is  approached 
with  such  phrases  as  *^  dogmatic,  quarrehng,  Greek 
intellectualism !  "  No,  there  is  no  doubt  that  this 
man  was  of  a  deeply  religious  nature.  His  theology 
was  the  expression  of  the  Christian  belief  in  re- 
demption, conditioned  by  the  notions  and  the  grade 
of  culture  of  his  period.  His  leading  thought  was 
this :  Christ  has  put  us  into  communion  with  God, 
inasmuch  as  He  was  God  and  became  man,  so  that 
we,  through  Him,  should  become  divine.  Christ 
could  not  have  achieved  that  had  He  been  a  creature. 
For  into  communion  with  God  one  can  come  only 
through  God.  It  would  be  heathenish  to  worship 
a  creature  and,  since  the  Church  has  been  worship- 
ping Christ  in  fact  for  a  long  time,  He  must  be 
more  than  creature.  He  must  be  God  and  eternally 
produced.  The  same  follows  directly  from  the  con- 
cept of  the  Father.  The  unchangeable  God  must 
have  been  ever  a  Father;  therefore,  He  must  have 
had  a  Son  always.  The  generation  of  the  Son  is 
not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  physical  process,  but  in 
similar  fashion  to  the  sun  generating  light.  In 
order  to  impart  divine  life,  the  Spirit  must  Itself 
be  divine,  not  merely  a  creature-like  being.  It 
follows  that  the  Deity  contains  three  independent 
hypostases,  persons  —  the  Father  as  the  head,  the 
Son  and  the  Spirit,  alike  in  nature  but  subordinate 
to  Him.  As  the  Logos  is  true  God  from  eternity, 
so  during  the  time  of  His  appearance  on  earth  He 

70 


Dogma  and  Morals 

took  on  true  humanity  —  body,  soul  and  spirit. 
According  to  Athanasius,  therefore,  the  oneness  of 
God  and  of  man  appeared  in  prototype  in  Christ,  so 
that,  through  Him  and  from  Him,  it  might  be 
realized  in  us  all  through  imitation.  That  is  the 
ever-recurring  thought  and  therein  lies  revealed  the 
truly  religious  motive  in  the  teaching  of  Athanasius. 
He  wished  to  find  the  realization  and  guarantee  in 
Christ  of  the  complete  union  and  community  of 
divine  and  human  beings.  Therein  he  was  right 
and  that  is  the  permanent  truth  of  his  teaching.  In 
the  Arian  dogma,  that  would  not  have  been  pos- 
sible, for  there  is  in  fact  a  being  inserted  between 
God  and  man  which  was  neither  God  nor  man ;  there 
would  not  be  any  reconciliation  of  the  opposition 
of  God  and  man,  but  the  irreconcilabihty  would 
have  been  made  permanent.  Arianism  is  essen- 
tially a  retrogression  of  Christianity  to  heathen 
polytheism  and  the  Jewish  opposition  of  God  and 
man. 

Such  is  the  tremendous  importance  of  this  dis- 
pute, and  one  cannot  circumvent  it  by  bandying 
phrases,  as  though  these  men  had  simply  been 
beating  the  air.  No,  they  knew  well  what  they 
wanted  and  they  had  their  deep  rehgious  interests. 
Athanasius  was  right  in  his  struggle  with  Arius, 
but  we  must  add  that,  although  he  saved  Christian- 
ity in  its  higher  truth  from  Arianism,  yet  he  could 
only  do  that  with  the  presupposition  of  his  own 
period,  a  period  which  thought  of  the  relationship 

71 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

between  the  divine  and  the  human,  the  spiritual  and 
the  natural,  in  deeply  pessimistic  fashion.  This  re- 
lationship they  regarded  as  an  opposition  as  deep 
as  an  abyss  and  insuperable.  Consequently  they 
could  not  think  of  the  reconciliation  of  this  opposi- 
tion other  than  as  a  pure  miracle.  That  unique 
experience  of  the  miraculous  figure  of  a  God-man 
is,  in  fact,  an  inconceivable  mystery,  just  as  Ath- 
anasius  formulated  it.  This  became  the  more  ap- 
parent v^hen  one  questioned  further:  How  was 
it  possible  for  this  divine  Logos  person  to  merge 
with  human  nature  into  the  unity  of  a  single  per- 
sonal life? 

This  question  was  the  axis  upon  which  the  strug- 
gles of  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  turned.  The 
Alexandrian  theologians  of  the  fifth  century  sought 
to  think  of  this  union  of  the  two  as  though  the  hu- 
man nature  lost  itself  in  its  union  with  the  divine 
nature  of  the  Logos,  just  as  a  drop  of  vinegar  leaves 
no  trace  when  poured  into  the  sea.  According  to 
this,  the  essential  part  of  the  divine  man  would  be 
the  divine,  whereas  the  human  part  would  be  in- 
finitesimally  small  —  actually  nothing  more  than  a 
semblance.  These  men  were  called  Monophysites. 
The  theologians  of  Antioch  protested  against  them. 
They  did  not  want  to  be  robbed  of  the  true  human- 
ity, particularly  the  moral  prototype  in  Christ :  there- 
fore, they  did  not  wish  the  relation  with  the  divine 
Logos  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  mixture,  but  as  a 
union  of  two  independent  subjects,  the  divine  Logos 

72 


Dogma  and  Morals 

and  the  human  Jesus.  In  these  two  views,  the  full 
God-manhood  was  not  achieved:  in  the  case  of  the 
Alexandrians,  because  the  human  side  rose  to  and 
disappeared  in  the  divine;  in  the  case  of  the  Anti- 
ochians  because  the  divine  and  the  human  were 
divided  into  two  parts,  while  the  unity  of  the 
person,  the  important  thing,  was  lacking.  For  this 
reason,  after  a  long  struggle,  which  need  not  be 
detailed  here,  the  Church  rejected  both  of  these 
extreme  views,  Monophysitism  and  Nestorianism, 
as  the  Antiochian  view  was  called.  It  did  accept 
the  compromise  formula  suggested  by  the  Roman 
bishop,  Leo.  At  the  Council  of  Chalcedon,  it  was 
decided  as  Church  dogma  that,  in  the  person  of 
the  God-man,  the  divine  and  the  human  natures 
were  neither  separated  nor  mixed  but  allied  in 
such  a  unity  that  each  of  these  natures,  in 
its  own  peculiarity,  could  maintain  itself  and  be 
active ;  in  other  words,  that  in  the  God-man,  divine 
omnipotence,  divine  omniscience,  and  divine  holi- 
ness, as  well  as  human  weakness,  human  suffering, 
human  limitations  of  knowledge  and  volition,  ex- 
isted at  one  and  the  same  time.  You  ask,  how  is 
such  a  thing  conceivable?  We  must  confess  that 
it  is  inconceivable.  Such  a  being  as  the  one  con- 
structed by  this  formula  is  not  a  man  of  our  kind, 
and  therefore  it  was  a  correct  conclusion  that  at 
the  close  of  his  dogmatic  development  through  John 
of  Damascus,  the  human  personality  of  the  God- 
man  was  denied  and  only  a  divine  I  in  him  posited. 

7Z 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

That  was  logical,  but  the  impossibility  of  think- 
ing such  a  construction  became  apparent.  What 
remains  of  the  humanity  of  the  God-man,  if  the 
human  "I"  be  missing?  How  can  there  be  hu- 
man thinking,  feeling,  and  willing,  when  the  "  I," 
the  subject  thereof,  is  not  there?  It  must  be  con- 
ceded that  this  is  unthinkable. 

Therewith,  I  close  my  short  review  of  the  genesis 
of  the  Christian  dogmas  of  the  Trinity  and  Christ. 
We  have  seen  that,  while  the  Church  did  follow 
along  the  lines  of  right  intention  in  regarding  the 
unity  of  the  divine  and  the  human  in  the  God-man 
Christ  as  a  type,  it  failed  in  its  intention  and  that 
it  could  not  but  fail  under  the  dualistic,  pessimistic, 
and  mythical  presuppositions  and  forms  of  thought 
of  the  period.  In  its  way,  the  Church  did  bring 
to  expression  the  idea  of  God-manhood,  but  only 
in  the  form  of  a  mythical  miraculous  being  In  whom 
the  actual  human  side  was  made  entirely  subordinate 
to  the  divine.  Such  is  the  end  of  this  development 
of  dogma.  The  worst,  however,  was  that  these 
mysterious  formulas  of  the  double  nature  of  Christ 
and  the  three  persons  in  God,  the  One  Being,  were 
now  elevated  to  articles  of  faith  to  which  everyone 
had  to  submit  if  he  did  not  wish  to  expose  himself 
to  the  danger  of  punishment  by  the  Church, —  ex- 
communication; to  which  may  be  added  that  the 
Byzantine  State  imposed  heavy  civil  punishments  on 
such  as  did  not  conform  to  the  formula.  Free 
thought  concerning  Christian  truth,   such   as  had 

74 


Dogma  and  Morals 

been  exercised  by  Origen  and  Clement,  and  such  as 
must  be  exercised  in  every  period  anew  in  order  to 
be  clear  in  its  own  mind  concerning  the  truth  of 
its  own  faith, —  such  free  thinking  was  stifled  by 
civil  and  ecclesiastical  law;  and  Christianity  was 
forced  into  the  fetters  of  ecclesiastical  dogmatic 
authorities.  What  religious  value  and  what  moral 
power  can  be  granted  to  a  faith  which  is  accepted 
on  the  authority  of  inconceivable  formulas?  That 
is  a  very  serious  question. 

In  order  not  to  judge  unjustly,  we  must  not  for- 
get that  in  those  same  centuries  in  which  these 
theological  struggles  were  so  passionately  fought 
out,  Christianity  showed  itself  as  the  power  of  sal- 
vation for  innumerable  pious  men.  True,  the  moral 
life  and  striving  of  the  Christianity  of  that  day 
suffers  from  the  same  one-sided  lack  of  moderation 
as  found  its  expression  in  the  theological  dogmas. 
As  the  human  side  suffered  in  the  dogma  of  the 
God-man,  so  in  the  moral  ideal  the  thing  sought 
was  not  so  much  the  purification  and  ennoblement 
of  human  nature,  as  an  asceticism  which  mortified 
the  flesh.  This  is  explained  by  that  pessimistic 
"world-fleeing,"  tired-of-life  mood  of  that  period 
of  ancient  decadence.  This  mood  and  manner  of 
thought  was  neither  a  product  of  Christianity,  as 
its  opponents  maintained,  nor  was  it,  as  many  theo- 
logians assert,  smuggled  into  Christianity  from  the 
outside  through  the  destructive  influences  of  Greek 
philosophy;  but  an  unprejudiced  eye  sees  that  this 

75 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

mood  was  found  by  Christianity  everywhere,  both 
in  Jewish  and  heathen  circles  and  that,  for  that  rea- 
son, Christianity  made  it  a  presupposition,  a  foil 
to  its  salvational  faith.  "  For  the  fashion  of  this 
world  passeth  away,"  says  Paul,  and  therefore  one 
must  not  seriously  concern  himself  with  it.  (I 
Corinthians,  vii.)  The  old  Christians  prayed: 
"  May  grace  come  and  the  world  pass  away."  "  The 
Lord  is  nigh.  He  comes  to  judge  the  quick  and  the 
dead."  Upon  this,  in  fact,  hinges  the  faith  and 
hope  of  the  Christians  in  the  beginnings  of  the 
Church.  In  the  expectation  of  the  early  end  of  the 
world,  the  care  for  bliss  in  the  world  beyond  su- 
perseded all  terrestrial  interests.  That  was  inevita- 
ble. Added  to  this  was  the  deep  moral  disinte- 
gration of  the  heathen  world  of  that  day,  wherein 
alongside  the  crudest  brute  force  and  the  holding 
life  cheap,  there  raged  unbounded  sensuality,  by 
which  art,  particularly  the  drama,  w^as  dragged  into 
the  depths.  The  Christians  whose  gaze  was  di- 
rected at  the  impending  judgment  of  the  world  by 
Christ  could  only  experience  utter  revulsion  at  such 
a  society.  To  them,  heathen  culture  was  only  the 
pomp  of  the  devil,  as  Tertullian  named  it.  Against 
this  heathen  sensuality  the  Christian  spirit  was  to 
guard  itself  by  a  struggle  against  and  mortification 
of  the  flesh.  The  contrast  with  the  environment  in- 
tensified this  polemical  ascetic  tendency  of  primi- 
tive Christianity,  as  was  entirely  natural.  How 
could  Christian  sympathies   feel   for  political  life 

76 


Dogma  and  Morals 

in  a  state  in  which  the  freedom  of  the  nations,  as 
well  as  of  individuals,  was  entirely  destroyed,  in 
which  everything  was  interwoven  with  heathen  cus- 
toms and  signs  and  symbols,  in  that  realm  which 
had  clearly  enough  evidenced  its  enmity  toward  the 
Christians  by  repeated  bloody  persecutions?  In 
fact,  it  is  no  wonder  that  many  of  the  Christians 
considered  the  Roman  world-empire  to  be  the  em- 
pire of  the  devil,  engaged  in  his  last  desperate  strug- 
gle, soon  to  be  entirely  overcome  on  the  judgment 
day. 

From  the  Apocalypse  of  John,  we  find  this  view 
and  we  can  trace  it  through  the  Nicene  period  to 
Augustine.  This  belief  in  the  impending  end  of 
the  world  and  the  fear  of  the  rulership  of  demons 
influenced  the  moral  life  of  the  Christians  of  the 
first  centuries  in  many  ways,  both  favorably  and 
unfavorably.  The  fear  of  the  destructive  traps  of 
the  demons,  which  threatened  even  Christians, 
spurred  them  on  to  a  conduct  of  life  which  was 
eternally  vigilant  and  strict  in  self -discipline.  The 
hope  of  the  early  triumph  of  Christ  and  of  his 
kingdom  inspired  them  to  marvelous  heroism  in 
sacrifice,  patience,  joy  in  sorrow,  and  courage  in 
death.  But  a  sane  view  and  an  active  hand  for  the 
moral  tasks  of  terrestrial  life  were  not  possible  with 
such  a  gloomy  outlook.  What  good  was  it  to  at- 
tempt to  improve  the  conditions  of  society  if  they 
were  all  soon  to  be  subject  to  destruction?  The 
only  valid  duty  could  be  the  alleviation  of  the  im- 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

mediate  sufferings  of  those  nearest,  through  benev- 
olence and  philanthropic  acts.  This  duty  the  Chris- 
tians performed,  and  in  such  fashion  that  even  the 
heathen  were  filled  with  wonderment.  But  an  all- 
embracing  activity  for  the  sake  of  the  whole  of 
society  was  missing  because  of  the  lack  of  a  positive 
interest  in  worldly  affairs.  Even  the  family,  the 
nearest  communion,  seldom  found  positive  moral 
valuation.  It  was  regarded  merely  as  a  necessary 
evil  which  the  Christian  might  have,  but  which 
it  were  better  for  him  to  disdain.  In  this  sense, 
Paul  expresses  himself  in  I  Corinthians,  vii;  it 
is  the  ruling  view  of  the  Church  fathers  and  is 
maintained  to  this  day  in  the  Catholic  Church. 
Though  the  Church  never  agreed  to  so  sharp  a 
statement  as  the  rejection  of  marriage,  it  did  regard 
celibacy  as  the  higher  ideal;  at  first  it  forbade  a 
second  marriage,  at  least,  to  the  clericals,  and  we 
find  this  as  early  as  the  pastoral  letters.  Yes,  even 
the  Nicene  Council  almost  decided  upon  the  celibacy 
of  the  priesthood.  Only  by  the  advice  of  Bishop 
Paphnutius,  the  Egyptian,  were  they  kept  from  it. 
Though  he  had  been  an  ascetic  from  his  youth,  he 
urged  the  continuance  of  the  marriage  of  the  priests 
on  moral  grounds.  In  fact,  opponents  to  this  as- 
cetic immoderateness  were  not  lacking.  Clement 
of  Alexandria,  for  example,  was  convinced  that  the 
Christian  could  maintain  his  moral  perfection  in 
every  position  in  life,  in  wealth  and  poverty,  in  mar- 
riage and  celibacy.     He  placed  marriage  even  higher 

78 


Dogma  and  Morals 

than  celibacy;  for,  by  reason  of  its  varied  moral 
tasks,  it  was  more  serviceable  for  a  complete  de- 
velopment of  Christian  virtue  than  celibacy  since  the 
unmarried  had  only  to  consider  the  salvation  of  his 
own  soul.  These  are  purely  Protestant  thoughts. 
The  representative  of  the  Catholic  view  was  Ter- 
tullian  who  had  on  occasion  drawn  a  very  pretty 
picture  of  the  spiritual  communion  of  Christian 
couples,  but  w^ho  regarded  celibacy  so  much  higher 
that,  in  his  eagerness  to  extol  it,  he  put  marriage 
on  a  par  with  immorality.  Herein,  he  shows  him- 
self to  be  a  follower  of  Montanism,  that  sect  in 
which  the  enthusiasm  of  the  primitive  Christians, 
the  world-estranged  hope  for  the  hereafter,  reacted 
fanatically  against  the  beginnings  of  the  worldliness 
of  the  Church. 

When  the  Church  rejected  Montanism  as  heret- 
ical error,  it  freed  itself  from  the  exaggerations  of 
earliest  youth  and  took  account  of  existing  con- 
ditions. But  as  it  held  fast  to  the  principle  of  the 
ascetic  ideal,  it  arrived  at  that  peculiar  compromise 
between  ideal  and  reality  which  found  expression 
in  the  dogma  of  double  morality  —  the  lower  which 
is  commanded  for  all  Christians,  and  the  higher 
which  is  recommended  to  those  wlio  strive  for  per- 
fection. This  perfection  was  understood  to  be 
celibacy,  voluntary  poverty,  and  frequent  fasting. 
One  may  well  say  that  this  Catholic  dogma  of  the 
double  morality,  *'  the  commands  and  suggestions," 
is  not  upon  the  high  plane  of  moral  idealism  which 

79 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

decides  a  man's  value  upon  the  basis  of  his  indi- 
vidual actions  or  according  to  the  purity  of  his  at- 
titude, his  unselfishness,  and  goodness.  That  is 
conceded,  but  we  do  not  wish,  therefore,  to  over- 
look that  the  dogma  of  the  double  morality  was 
not  an  arbitrary  invention  of  the  old  Church,  rather 
that  it  hangs  together  with  the  ascetic  tendency  of 
primitive  Christianity  out  of  which,  naturally  in  the 
course  of  its  development,  there  rose  the  world 
Church.  Think  of  the  command  which  was  given 
to  the  rich  young  man:  wouldst  become  perfect? 
Then  go,  sell  what  thou  hast,  and  give  it  to  the 
poor;  thus  shalt  thou  have  treasure  in  heaven.  It 
was  this  saying  which  impelled  the  pious  Antonius, 
a  rich  Egyptian,  to  give  away  his  entire  fortune, 
to  desert  his  home  and  to  retire  into  the  desert  where 
he  lived  many  a  long  year  in  a  rocky  grotto,  strug- 
gling with  the  demons  which  came  out  of  the  hor- 
rors of  the  desert  and  the  fantasies  of  his  own  soul 
which  threatened  to  destroy  his  peace.  This  Saint 
Antony  allowed  himself  to  be  lured  to  Alexandria 
during  the  persecutions  of  Maximian,  in  order  that 
he  might  thus  gain  the  much-desired  martyrdom. 
On  this  journey,  however,  he  did  not  meet  death 
but  many  friends  and  admirers  who  beheld  in  him 
the  ideal  of  Christian  sanctity.  Among  these  was 
Athanasius  who  later  became  his  biographer. 

The  example  of  Saint  Antony  found  many  imi- 
tators among  the  world-weary  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury—  men  who  were  weary  of  the  struggles  and 

80 


Dogma  and  Morals 

strife  of  ecclesiastical  parties  and  longed  for  peace 
and  solitude.  In  Egypt,  retirement  from  the  world 
became  such  an  epidemic  that  the  cities  were  de- 
serted, while  the  desert  was  peopled.  In  the  begin- 
ning, each  hermit  lived  for  himself,  but  finally  they 
moved  closer  to  one  another,  formed  colonies,  and 
thus  developed  the  monaster ial  community  of 
monks.  Pachomius,  a  disciple  of  Saint  Antony, 
who  had  learned  the  blessings  of  discipline  in  early 
experience  as  a  soldier,  is  considered  the  first 
founder  of  a  monastery.  As  conditions  of  admis- 
sion into  the  community,  he  set  up  absolute  poverty, 
abstinence  from  sexual  intercourse,  and  uncondi- 
tional obedience.  By  Basilius  the  Great,  it  was 
made  the  task  of  the  monks  to  care  for  the  souls  of 
the  laity.  Fixed  rules  for  an  order,  however,  were 
first  given  by  Benedict  of  Nursia  for  the  first  West- 
ern monastery,  founded  in  529  on  Monte  Cassino. 
Therefrom  came  the  Benedictine  Order.  Benedict 
softened  the  ascetic  strictness  and  imposed  upon 
the  monks  as  a  duty,  besides  religious  exercises, 
some  form  of  industry.  By  the  copying  of  re- 
ligious and  profane  manuscripts,  by  teaching  the 
young,  by  missionary  work,  by  daily  labor,  by  tilhng 
and  cultivating  the  land,  by  building  churches  and 
monasteries  —  by  all  these  activities  the  monks  be- 
came worthy  bearers  of  culture.  But,  as  I  said, 
that  did  not  happen  until  later  in  the  Western  coun- 
tries; in  the  Orient  the  kernel  of  monastic  life,  the 
object  in  itself,  remained  asceticism.     At  all  times 

81 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

the  monks  remained,  therefore,  the  eHte  corps  of  the 
Church,  because  they  were  the  ranking  representa- 
tives of  the  ecclesiastical  ideal  of  sanctity.  Since 
the  days  of  the  Montanists,  the  realization  of  this 
ideal  by  the  layman  was  not  expected.  The  great- 
est of  the  theologians,  Athanasius,  Basilius  the 
Great,  Hieronymus,  and  Augustine,  were  enthusi- 
astic spokesmen  of  the  monkish  ideal.  Monasticism 
is  only  the  practical  expression  of  that  same  dualis- 
tic  mode  of  thinking,  that  same  tendency  toward 
the  supernatural,  superhuman,  supermundane,  which 
found  its  theoretical  expression  in  the  dogma  of  the 
supernatural  miraculous  God-man  and  of  the  funda- 
mental sinfulness  of  natural  manhood. 


82f 


CHAPTER  IV 

CEREMONIAL   AND   ESTABLISHMENT 

The  more  the  doctrine  of  the  God-man  removed 
him  to  a  distant  heavenly  height,  the  more  tirgent 
became  the  need  of  bridging  the  yawning  chasm  be- 
tween him  and  mankind  on  earth.  This  was  the 
purpose  served  by  the  worship  of  the  saints. 

It  is  easy  to  call  this  a  new  form  of  idolatry,  but 
it  is  more  correct  to  understand  how  this  worship 
arose,  psychologically  and  historically.  The  psy- 
chological motives,  revealed  by  the  worship  of  the 
martyrs,  those  first  Christian  saints,  are  especially 
clear.  It  is  that  same  feeling  of  piety  which  led  to 
the  worship  of  Jesus  himself.  In  loving  remem- 
brance, the  friends  of  the  dead  man  cling  to  his 
image.  They  feel  themselves  to  be  one  with  him 
in  such  deep  communion  that,  in  moments  of  ecstatic 
worship,  they  seem  to  see  his  very  self,  they  seem 
to  hear  him  speak  words  of  admonition  and  con- 
solation. Death,  too,  adds  its  transfiguring  activ- 
ity to  the  picture  of  the  deceased,  strips  him  of 
earthly  limitations  and  blemishes,  and  lifts  him  to 
a  supermundane  glory.  When  a  worshipper  adopts 
one  saint  as  his  own  ideal,  he  feels  himself  there- 
by filled  with  a  higher  power;  he  considers  this 

83 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

power  as  an  emanation  from  his  ideal  to  which  he 
has  raised  himself;  thus  it  was  entirely  natural 
that  he  did  not  only  pray  for  the  saint,  but  prayed 
also  to  him,  that  his  wishes  might  be  fulfilled 
through  the  intercession  of  the  saint. 

This  is  an  entirely  natural  process  which  was  at 
first  supported  by  the  after-effects  of  heathen  cus- 
toms and  emotions.  It  had  been  an  old  custom  of 
the  heathen,  in  their  private  affairs,  to  turn  not  only 
to  the  general  gods,  but  also  to  private  protecting 
gods  and  to  heroes,  who  were  more  intimate  with 
the  individual.  Each  district,  each  city  had  its  own 
hero,  its  own  protecting  deity;  the  memorial  days 
and  feasts  of  these  local  deities  were  celebrated  by 
customs  and  festivities,  local  and  peculiar.  It  is 
only  natural  that  the  heathen-Christian  congrega- 
tions wanted  something  to  take  their  place  and 
found  that  something  in  the  feasts  of  the  saints. 
In  some  cases  only  the  name  was  changed  while  the 
customs  and  habits,  unchanged,  were  transferred 
to  the  local  saint.  Then  followed  apostles  and 
prophets;  but  from  the  fifth  century  on,  they  were 
all  preceded  by  Mary,  the  mother  of  Jesus.  With- 
out doubt,  there  were  also  heathen  examples  which 
influenced  this  worship  too ;  her  surname,  Panhagia, 
had  formerly  been  that  of  Venus  Urania,  and  tlie 
picture  of  the  Mother  of  God,  with  the  boy  Jesus  in 
her  arms,  bears  a  very  strong  resemblance  to  the 
Egyptian  mother  of  the  gods  with  the  Horus  boy 
on  her  arm.     The  heathen  mother  of  the  gods,  how- 

P4 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

ever,  was  transfigured  in  Mary  into  the  Christian 
ideal  of  woman  and  that  from  both  sides,  virginal 
purity  and  merciful  mother-love.  Certainly  this 
new  queen  of  heaven  was  a  welcome  substitute  and 
companion-piece  for  the  female  element  of  the  an- 
cient heathen  deity,  but  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the 
Mater  Dolorosa,  enthroned  as  the  queen  of  heaven, 
was  a  real  Christian  ideal,  the  female  expression  of 
that  same  fundamental  Christian  ideal  which  we 
visualize  in  male  form,  for  ourselves,  in  the  image 
of  Christ, —  namely,  that  from  the  seed  of  sacrifice 
and  pain,  the  miraculous  power  of  love  arises,  vic- 
toriously superior  to  need  and  death  of  earthly  life. 
That  is  the  real  thought  in  the  cult  of  Mary. 

As  there  had  been  chapels  erected  to  heathen 
heroes  over  their  bones  and  their  relics,  so  there 
were  chapels  built  over  the  graves  of  the  martyrs; 
here,  too,  there  grew  up  a  worship  of  relics  which 
confined  itself  not  only  to  their  bones,  but  extended 
to  the  garments  of  the  saints  and  the  instruments 
of  torture  by  which  they  had  been  put  to  death, 
the  places  where  their  footsteps  were  known  to  have 
been  and  where  their  bodies  had  been  finally  in- 
terred. Countless  legends  of  miraculous  works 
which  transpired  in  these  places  and  were  brought 
about  by  these  relics  came  into  being.  The  ma- 
terialization of  religion  loomed  large,  but  there  was 
underneath  a  natural  feeling,  namely,  that  the  visi- 
ble thing  made  present,  for  the  pious  one,  the  spirit 
with  which  it  had  at  one  time  been  in  relation  and 

85 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

thus  became  the  mediator  in  an  association  of  re- 
ligious ideas.  On  that  spot  where  some  good  man 
had  walked,  a  sacred  memory  rested.  So  the  cross 
of  Golgotha  became  for  all  Christendom  the  mirac- 
ulously active  symbol  for  the  faith  which  overcomes 
the  world. 

If  the  relics  are  to  be  judged  as  visible  symbols 
which  release  associations  of  religious  ideas,  then 
the  ceremonial  is  a  dramatic  symbol  which  presents 
the  sacred  story  of  legend  in  such  fashion  that  the 
worshipping  congregation  experiences  immediately 
the  reality  which  it  feels,  and  thus  achieves  the  ef- 
fect of  some  past  fact.  After  all,  that  is  the  mean- 
ing of  all  rites  of  worship:  a  dramatic  representa- 
tion of  past  facts  for  the  purpose  of  taking  in  to 
the  spirit  of  the  worshiper  the  experience  which  he 
is  repeating.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  rites 
which,  since  the  third  century,  the  Church  desig- 
nated as  Christian  mysteries,  sacraments.  They  do 
not  go  back  as  far  as  Jesus,  but  the  origin  of  the 
sacraments  lies  in  the  Christ  spirit  of  the  congre- 
gation, which  spirit  gave  itself  in  them  a  dramatic 
expression.  At  the  same  time,  it  must  not  be  over- 
looked that  the  forms  of  these  rites,  for  the  most 
part,  originated  in  pre-Christian  religions  and  were 
not  original  inventions  of  Christianity.  They  were 
only  filled  with  the  new  Christian  content ;  that  was 
ever  the  way  in  which  the  Church  formed  symbolic 
rites.  Existing  things  were  taken  over  and  new 
interpretations  given  to  them. 

86 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

Baptism  is  a  ceremonial  of  acceptance  into  the 
congregation.  It  was  probably  taken  over  from  the 
disciples  of  John.  It  was  made  a  sacrament  as 
early  as  Paul  who,  in  this  act  of  external  nature, 
which  consisted  in  the  immersion  of  the  one  bap- 
tized, beheld  a  repetition  of  the  entombment  of 
Christ  and  his  resurrection  from  the  grave.  In 
fact,  the  one  baptized  experienced  in  himself, 
through  this  imitation  of  a  former  action,  that 
which  was  typical  in  Christ  and  took  place  exter- 
nally—  namely,  the  old  man  dies  with  Christ  and 
with  Christ  lives  again,  a  new  man  for  spiritual 
life.  This  idea  of  rebirth  through  sense  action 
has  undoubted  likeness  to  the  Mithra  mystery. 
There,  too,  we  have  an  immersion  in  water  present- 
ing a  picture  of  resurrection;  wherefore  those  who 
perform  this  action  called  themselves  "  reborn  for 
eternity."  As  far  back  as  Tertullian  this  likeness 
was  remarked  and  he  explains  that  the  demons  aped 
Christian  customs.  But  he  overlooked  the  fact  that 
the  heathen  mysteries  were  much  older  than  the 
Christian.  Even  the  anointing  of  the  forehead  with 
oil,  in  connection  with  baptism,  which  later  became 
the  especial  sacrament  of  confirmation,  has  its  ex- 
act parallel  in  the  Mithra  cult. 

The  Last  Supper  was  originally  a  love-meal  of 
the  Christian  brotherhood,  an  activity  of  brotherly 
love  on  the  part  of  the  rich,  who  contributed  the 
means  for  the  common  meal,  in  favor  of  the  poor. 
At  first  the  prayer  which  was  spoken  then  was  one 

8^ 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  thanks  for  the  natural  gifts  of  God,  as  it  is  found 
in  the  teachings  of  the  Apostles,  without  any  mys- 
tical secondary  relation.  Therefore,  these  love 
feasts  are  also  called  "  Eucharisties  "  i.  e.,  thanks- 
giving. These  religious  meals  of  the  brethren  were 
a  widespread  custom  in  the  non-Christian,  the  Jew- 
ish as  well  as  the  heathen,  world.  At  the  Chris- 
tian meal,  there  was  an  especial  sanctity  through 
the  recollection  of  the  last  meal  of  the  disciples  with 
the  master  and  the  memories  of  his  sorrow  and  his 
death.  Paul  was  the  first  who  added  this  second 
meaning  to  the  love- feasts  of  the  Christian  broth- 
erhood. Finally,  there  was  added  a  third  meaning 
which  was  entirely  strange  to  the  primitive  Chris- 
tian congregation,  while  very  closely  related  to 
heathen  customs :  Paul  calls  the  blessed  bread  and 
the  blessed  cup  a  community  with  the  body  of  Christ 
and  his  blood,  and  the  enjoyment  of  them  is  the 
means  of  entry  into  a  mysterious  alliance  with 
Christ,  just  as  those  who  celebrated  a  sacrificial 
meal  entered  into  mysterious  alliance  with  the  de- 
mons by  the  enjoyment  of  the  meat  of  the  sacrifice. 
Hence  the  old  idea  of  the  sacrificial  meal  as  a  holy 
communion  whereby  one  partakes  in  some  fashion 
of  the  life  of  the  god;  this  age-old  idea  Paul  ap- 
plies to  the  Christian  supper.  Thus,  the  latter  be- 
came a  mystery,  a  sacramental  action  which  soon 
became  differentiated  from  the  love- feast  and  united 
with  the  actual  worship  of  God,  in  order  to  sug- 
gest thereby  that  it  was  a  real  rite  of  worship  and 

88 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

not  an  ordinary  meal.  By  this  sacramental  interpre- 
tation, Paul  took  over  heathen  notions  as  they  were 
customary  in  the  heathen  religions  and  applied  them 
to  the  Christian  meal.  To  this,  then,  there  were 
added  further  notions  which  were  self-evident  for 
the  realism  of  the  ancient  cults  and  their  mysticism, 
just  as  they  are  now  impossible  of  understanding 
and  perhaps  revolting  to  us.  Even  Paul  regarded 
the  materials  of  the  supper  as  a  kind  of  Tabu,  the 
unworthy  enjoyment  of  which  brings  physical  death 
in  its  train.  From  this  it  naturally  follows  that,  on 
the  other  hand,  a  worthy  enjoyment  of  the  food  is 
a  means  toward  life,  an  antidote  against  death,  and 
a  means  of  salvation  for  immortality  —  as  Ignatius 
especially  works  it  out.  With  Justin  and  the  Alex- 
andrian theologians  of  the  fourth  century,  the  con- 
nection of  the  bread  and  the  Logos  appears  as  an 
imitation  and  continuation  of  the  alliance  of  the 
Logos  with  the  human  nature  in  the  incarnation  of 
Christ.  The  sacrificial  death  for  salvation  was  to 
be  an  imitation  and  continual  repetition  through  the 
Eucharist.  Li  the  beginning,  the  supper  was  a 
memorial  feast;  then  we  find  the  notion,  even  as 
early  as  Tertullian,  that  the  gifts  of  the  rich  are  a 
sort  of  sacrifice  which  were  offered  to  the  poor, 
hence  to  God  —  as  a  memorial  meal  for  the  death  of 
Christ,  on  the  one  hand,  as  a  sacrifice  to  God  on 
the  other.  In  fact,  that  was  close  to  the  synthesis 
which  makes  this  action  a  bloodless  repetition  by 
the  priest  of  that  sacrifice  which  Christ  once  made 

89 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

on  Golgotha  —  a  bloodless  repetition  for  the  salva- 
tion of  the  living  and  the  dead. 

This  view  gave  rise  to  the  Mass  as  the  representa- 
tion of  the  drama  of  supernatural  salvation,  from 
the  incarnation  to  the  death  of  the  God-man, —  an 
ever  repeating  miracle  accomplished  through  the 
priests  who  thus  appeared  to  be  the  donors  of  the 
grace  of  salvation,  in  the  stead  of  Christ.  Now,  we 
Protestants  are  accustomed  to  condemn  the  Mass  as 
something  repugnant  because  of  its  magical  and 
hierarchical  relations,  but  even  here  we  ought  not  to 
be  unjust  toward  the  old  Church,  which  is,  after 
all,  the  mother  of  us  all,  and  in  her  favor,  as  an 
excuse  for  her  if  you  wish,  we  ought  to  remember 
two  things  which  most  moderns  scarcely  ever  re- 
member. First,  this  view  of  the  sacrament  cor- 
responds so  exactly  to  the  realism  of  the  ancient 
mode  of  thinking,  in  general,  and  to  the  ancient 
mystical  worship,  in  particular,  that  the  entry  of 
the  Church  into  these  ideas  was  inevitable;  they 
were  practically  forced  upon  her  by  the  stream  of 
heathen  that  poured  into  the  Church.  She  had  to 
reckon  with  them  and  nobody  thought  it  wrong  that 
the  spiritual  was  thought  of  in  connection  with  the 
sense  symbol.  Such  is  the  ancient  realism  of  wor- 
ship, in  which  we  who  would  judge  historically  must 
transpose  ourselves.  Second,  we  must  consider 
that  under  this  temporally-conditioned  veil  of  the 
idea  of  the  Mass,  there  were  hidden,  in  fact,  real 
religious  ideas    and    Christian    emotions.     In    the 

90 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

process  of  the  sacred  action,  one  felt  and  saw  the 
spiritual  presence  of  the  God-man;  the  mystery  of 
the  supermundane  and  inconceivable  dogma,  in  a 
certain  sense,  found  completion  and  correction  in 
the  sensuously  tangible  sacrifice  of  the  Mass.  In 
the  action,  it  was  felt  that  God  is  not  only  beyond, 
the  God-man  not  only  in  heaven,  but  that  he  was 
present  in  the  congregation  as  the  divine  force  of 
their  faith  and  love.  Theologians  with  spirit,  such 
as  Origen  and  Augustine,  recognized  this  ideal  con- 
tent and  expressed  it.  Augustine  in  particular  gave 
this  interpretation  of  the  Eucharist,  that  it  was  ac- 
tually the  congregation  itself  which  was  the  mys- 
tical body  of  Christ,  ever  ofifering  itself  up,  in  faith 
and  love,  to  God.  Thus,  everything  magical  disap- 
pears and  merges  into  a  higher  ideal  view  of  the 
mystery. 

Hand  in  hand  with  the  development  of  dogma, 
custom  and  worship,  moves  the  establishment  of  the 
Church. 

In  the  formation  of  the  Bishop's  office,  in  the 
second  century,  the  Church  created  for  itself  an  in- 
stitution which  secured  its  existence  and  furthered 
its  development  in  the  struggle  with  enemies  without 
and  within.  From  the  close  of  the  second  century, 
these  Bishops  made  the  claim  that  they  were  the 
successors  of  the  Apostles,  installed  by  them  and, 
by  means  of  the  ordination  of  the  laying  on  of 
hands,  equipped  with  the  power  of  binding  and  loos- 
ing.    This  was  just  as  unhistorical  a  fiction  as  that 

91 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

parallel  fiction  by  which  the  Church  doctrines  of 
faith  were  traced  back  by  direct  tradition  to  the 
Apostles.  Neither  the  one  nor  the  other  is  the 
case. 

The  post-apostolic  congregations  had  their  per- 
sons of  rank,  "  clerus,"  namely  presbyters  or  elders, 
and  episcopoi  or  overseers,  trustees  or  superiors  who 
directed  the  affairs  of  the  congregation;  also  dea- 
cons who  performed  the  lower  works  such  as  the 
care  of  the  poor  and  the  like.  These  clericals  were 
simply  commissioned  by  the  congregation  itself,  in- 
stalled by  the  free  choice  of  the  rest  of  the  congre- 
gation, without  any  spiritual  privilege.  In  spiritual 
authority,  the  prophets  and  teachers  were  far  ahead 
of  them,  though  they  had  no  titles  of  office  but  were 
merely  differentiated  by  an  equipment  with  the 
spirit  of  prophecy  and  the  ability  to  teach.  Thus, 
the  original  form  of  the  establishment  was  free  and 
rested  on  the  basis  of  equality  and  freedom,  hence 
purely  democratic  and  without  a  trace  of  hierarchy. 
Such  a  condition  could  not  exist  permanently.  This 
rein  granted  the  free  inspiration  and  teaching  of  in- 
dividuals whose  norm  was  an  inner  impulse  —  all 
of  this  proved  more  and  more  impossible;  disputes 
and  confusion  were  the  consequences,  caused  by 
personal  ambition  and  desire  for  novelty.  In  the 
Epistle  of  the  Roman  Clement  to  the  Corinthians, 
these  practices  were  castigated.  At  the  same  time 
erroneous  Gnostic  teachings  sought  entry  into  the 
Church,  and  against  them,  this  subjective  princi- 
pe 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

pie,  the  spirit,  was  no  protection.  The  need  ex- 
isted for  a  firmer  organization  of  the  congregation. 
It  was  natural,  especially  in  the  congregations  of 
the  larger  cities,  that  the  chairmanship  of  the  col- 
lege of  the  presbyters,  which  had  not  been  the 
prerogative  of  any  one  person  in  the  beginning, 
should  become  a  position  for  life,  a  dignity  resting 
upon  one  overseer,  episcopus,  whose  duty  it  then 
was  to  conduct  the  services,  to  decide  upon  the  ad- 
mission of  persons  into  the  congregation,  as  well 
as  the  forgiveness  of  sinners  or  their  exclusion  from 
the  congregation.  More  and  more,  this  became  the 
exclusive  privilege  of  the  episcopus,  who  rose  above 
the  presbyters  who  had  been  his  equals,  as  a  monarch 
rises  above  his  aristocracy. 

The  Ignatian  Epistles  furnish  us  a  glimpse  of  this 
origin  of  the  monarchical  episcopate  in  the  congre- 
gation. There  we  read  that  no  Church  action  is 
valid  without  the  consent  of  the  Bishop,  that  one 
must  be  subject  to  the  Bishop  as  to  Christ;  only 
those  belonged  to  God  and  Christ  who  were  at  one 
with  the  Bishop.  The  Bishop  is  thus  the  visible 
head  of  the  individual  congregation,  as  Christ  is  the 
invisible  head  of  the  entire  Church.  On  the  other 
hand,  these  Bishops,  in  so  far  as  they  are  subordi- 
nate to  Christ  and  equal  in  rank  one  w^th  the  other, 
are  the  successors  of  the  Apostles,  installed  by  them 
and,  by  laying  on  of  hands,  sanctified  as  the  bearers 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  possessors  of  the  merciful  gift 
of  truth  —  that  is  of  the  correct,  ecclesiastical  doc- 

93 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

trine,  the  tradition  of  which  was  entrusted  to  them 
by  the  Apostles.  That  was  the  ruling  viewpoint 
of  Irenaeus  and  Tertullian,  the  two  main  opponents 
of  the  heretical  Gnosis.  In  their  struggle,  they 
used  as  a  weapon  the  Church  tradition  represented 
by  the  Bishops,  the  authority  for  which  they  based 
on  the  statement  of  the  apostolic  succession  of  the 
Bishops.  The  possession  of  the  true  spirit  and  of 
the  true  tradition  belongs  together,  they  are  mutual 
conditions.  Tertulhan  did  not  concede  that  the 
Bishops  exclusively  had  the  right  to  direct  Church 
discipline,  to  decide  upon  forgiveness  of  sins,  or 
exclusion  from  the  congregation.  As  a  Montanist, 
he  sought  to  preserve  this  right  for  his  prophets, 
namely  those  personalities  who  excelled  in  rigoristic 
asceticisms  and  visions.  Obviously  that  was  il- 
logical. According  to  this,  the  principle  of  enthusi- 
astic individualism  was  to  be  valid  in  the  field  of 
church  discipline  but  was  no  longer  to  hold  in  the 
field  of  theory,  of  dogmatic  belief.  It  was  not  diffi- 
cult for  the  Roman  Bishops,  with  their  clever  sense 
of  the  practical,  to  overcome  this  inconsequence.  By 
rejecting  Montanistic  enthusiasm,  this  principle  of 
subjectivity,  and  by  granting  the  right  of  forgive- 
ness of  sins  to  the  Bishop,  they  strengthened  the 
authority  of  the  office  of  the  Bishop  in  general,  and 
of  the  Roman  Bishop  in  particular,  for  all  future 
time. 

As   early  as  the  middle  of  the  third  century, 
Cyprian  perfected  the  idea  of  the  hierarchy  so  that 

94 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

the  dignity  of  the  Old  Testament  priest  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  clerics,  and  they  were  made  the  ex- 
clusive bearers  of  the  rites  of  worship,  as  the  priest 
had  been  in  the  Mosaic  law.  This  was  paralleled  by 
the  development  of  the  Supper  into  a  sacrifice. 
Where  there  is  a  sacrifice,  there  must  be  a  priest 
who  offers  the  sacrifice.  If  Christ  as  the  High 
Priest,  had  brought  the  unique  sacrifice  on  Golgotha, 
it  seemed  a  closely  related  conclusion  that,  in  the 
altar  service  representing  that  sacrifice,  performed 
by  the  Bishops  and  presbyter,  they  were  serving  as 
priests  in  Christ's  stead,  representing  the  congrega- 
tion before  God  and  distributing  God's  mercy  to  the 
congregation.  In  the  middle  of  the  third  century, 
the  foundation  of  the  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  had 
been  laid  thus  far;  the  clerics  were  the  privileged 
proprietors  of  the  power  of  Church  doctrine,  of 
the  power  of  discipline,  and  of  the  services  at  the 
altar.  In  the  consciousness  of  that  period,  they 
united  the  three  offices  of  the  Old  Testament  theoc- 
racy, prophet,  king  and  priest,  and  therewith  they 
became  the  predestined  heads  and  masters  of  the 
coming  Christian  theocracy. 

On  the  basis  of  the  Episcopacy  there  developed, 
during  the  course  of  the  following  three  centuries, 
the  Roman  Papacy,  and  thereby  a  tip  was  set  upon 
the  proud  edifice  of  the  hierarchical  pyramid.  The 
political  and  military  organization  of  the  Roman 
Empire  served  as  a  model.  The  Bishops  of  the 
capital  cities  of  the  provinces  gained  in  power  over 

95 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

the  Bishops  of  the  other  cities  and  called  themselves 
Metropolitan;  and  among  the  Metropolitans  there 
arose  superior  Metropolitans,  the  patriarchs  of  the 
large  dioceses  in  the  capital  cities,  Alexandria,  An- 
tioch,  Byzantium,  and  Rome.  That  the  conflict 
between  these  most  powerful  Bishops  was  finally 
decided  in  the  Romans'  favor  was  naturally  condi- 
tioned by  historical  circumstances,  and  there  was  no 
need  of  the  legend  of  Peter  as  the  first  Bishop  of 
Rome  for  an  explanation.  It  was  naturally  the  im- 
portance of  Rome  itself,  as  the  capital  city  of  the 
world,  that  city  into  which  all  the  strands  of  culture 
and  of  spiritual  life  were  gathered,  out  of  which 
issued  the  government  of  the  world  —  it  was  the 
importance  of  Rome,  this  school  of  the  classical  art 
of  government,  which  very  early  gave  the  Roman 
congregation  its  peculiar  power,  so  that  it  was  not 
long  before  it  became  proverbial :  all  congregations 
must  follow  the  model  of  Rome.  The  privileges  of 
their  position  the  Roman  Bishops  knew  well  how 
to  employ  to  the  full.  In  all  important  disputed 
questions  concerning  ceremonial.  Church  discipline, 
or  dogma,  the  Roman  Bishops  found  and  decreed 
that  which  served  the  purpose  and  met  the  need  of 
the  times.  In  the  Easter  question,  for  example, 
at  the  close  of  the  second  century.  Bishop  Victor 
was  the  representative  of  the  progressive  Western 
custom  against  the  men  of  Asia  Minor  who  wished 
to  hold  fast  to  the  old  tradition  and  were,  therefore, 
put  under  the  ban.     Then  again,  in  the  question 

96 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

of  the  rigoristic  penitential  discipline,  Zephyrinus 
and  Calixtus  represented  the  cause  of  the  same 
human  understanding  against  Montanistic  excesses. 
They  declared  that  a  world  church  could  not  shut 
itself  up  in  a  conventicle  of  saints,  but  must  hold 
wide  open  its  door  for  all  the  world.  During  the 
Arian  disputes,  the  Roman  Church  was  the  support 
of  the  Nicene  Athanasian  creed.  At  that  time  the 
Eastern  Church  was  split  within  and  swayed  un- 
steadily from  one  side  to  another.  In  the  disputes 
concerning  the  double  nature  of  the  God-man,  it 
was  the  diplomatic  cleverness  of  Leo  the  Great 
which  proposed  the  means  by  which  the  two  ex- 
tremes could  be  united,  and  it  was  he  who  put  it 
through  in  the  Chalcedonian  Confession.  The 
same  Leo  the  Great  was  so  clever  that  he  did  away 
with  the  public  confession  of  sin  in  the  presence  of 
the  congregation,  that  custom  which  made  men 
ashamed,  and  he  substituted  private  confession  to 
the  priest.  At  first  this  was  simply  a  popular  al- 
leviation of  the  strict  demand  for  penitence.  It 
w^as  an  act  of  popular  alleviation,  but  at  the  same 
time  it  gave  an  immense  increase  to  the  power  of 
the  priests  over  the  conscience.  In  the  powerful 
consciousness  of  rulership  there  was  resident  in  this 
Church  prince,  the  idea  of  the  mediaeval  papacy. 
He  says :  "  In  the  name  of  Peter,  I  stand  at  the 
head  of  the  Church ;  according  to  the  command  of 
God  and  the  Apostles  I  render  judgment ;  according 
to  the  inspirations  of  the  Spirit  I  speak  and  teach 

97 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

and  make  firm  the  unsteady  hearts  of  the  brethren. 
Upon  me  falls  the  honor  if  the  Church  is  well  gov- 
erned, and  upon  me  has  been  laid  the  care  of  it." 
For  this  same  end,  the  other  Bishops  were  to  work 
together  with  him  and  hearken  to  the  disposition  of 
the  apostohc  chair.  He  did  want  the  cares  of  the 
Church  shared  with  him,  but  not  the  power  over  it. 
As  Peter  precedes  the  Apostles,  thus  the  chair  of 
Peter  is  to  all  the  other  Bishops'  chairs. 

These  were  the  claims,  these  the  convictions  of 
the  great  Leo  who  was  Bishop  of  Rome  about  the 
year  450.  And  as  is  usual  in  the  history  of  the 
world,  that  fortune  favors  the  clever  and  the  bold, 
so  did  it  happen  here.  Historical  circumstances 
played  with  favor  toward  the  clever  Roman  Bishop's 
governmental  and  political  claims.  The  trans- 
ference of  the  emphasis  of  worldly  empire  to  the 
East  seemed  to  elevate  the  dignity  of  the  Byzan- 
tine Metropolitan,  who  was  a  creation  of  that  court, 
above  that  of  his  Roman  rival,  but  in  truth  the  mat- 
ter was  reversed.  The  ecclesiastical  authority  of 
the  Roman  Bishop  thus  grew  far  beyond  that  of  all 
the  oriental  patriarchs,  because  the  Roman  Bishop 
was  far  less  dependent  on  the  Byzantine  Emperor. 
There  dwelt  in  these  Roman  Bishops  the  same  proud 
spirit  of  ecclesiastical  independence  and  superiority 
which  found  typical  expression  when  Bishop  Am- 
brosius  of  Milan  forced  a  public  penitence  in  Church 
upon  Emperor  Theodoric  the  Great,  who  had  in- 
stigated a  great  slaughter  of  the  inhabitants  of  Thes- 

98 


Ceremonial  and  Establishment 

salonica  because  some  officers  had  been  murdered. 
When  the  West  Roman  reahn  broke  to  pieces 
amidst  the  storms  of  the  migrations  of  peoples,  then 
the  throne  of  Peter  was  the  rock  which  stood  un- 
moved in  the  billows  of  political  fate,  and  the  Ro- 
man Pope  became  the  heir  to  the  Roman  Emperors. 


90 


CHAPTER  V 

AURELIUS   AUGUSTINUS 

That  the  development  of  the  Western  Church 
during  the  centuries  of  the  middle  ages  was  differ- 
ent in  kind,  more  moved  and  richer  than  that  of  the 
Eastern,  was  occasioned  not  only  by  the  difference  of 
external  political  situation  (as  I  pointed  out  in  the 
last  lecture)  but  it  lay  also  in  the  inner  spiritual 
peculiarity  of  the  development  of  Christianity  in 
the  East  and  in  the  West,  corresponding  to  the  dif- 
ference in  character  between  the  Greek  and  Roman 
Christianity.  The  Western  Church  never  had  so 
much  sense  for  theological  speculations,  for  ques- 
tions concerning  the  nature  of  God  or  of  the  God- 
man.  She  did  accept  the  dogmas  that  had  been 
formulated  in  the  Orient,  but  her  actual  interests 
were  in  other  directions  —  the  practical  questions  of 
Christianity,  the  moral  education  of  the  human  will 
by  the  Church.  This  practical  tendency  got  its  re- 
ligious deepening  and  didactic  formulation  through 
Aurelius  Augustinus,  who  impressed  his  spirit  upon 
the  Western  Church,  as  Origen  and  Athanasius  had 
impressed  theirs  upon  the  Eastern  Church. 

Inasmuch  as  the  theology  of  Augustine  is  based 
for  the  most  part  upon  his  personal  experiences,  as 

100 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

told  by  him  in  his  confessions,  I  will  give  a  brief 
review  of  his  life. 

Augustine  was  born  in  the  year  354  in  Tagaste 
near  Hipporegius,  in  Numidia,  where  he  afterward 
lived  and  died  as  Bishop.  His  father  was  a  re- 
spected city  councilman.  From  him  Augustine  in- 
herited his  spirit  of  rulership  and  passionate  tem- 
perament ;  while  from  his  pious  mother,  Monica,  he 
got  his  deep  religious  sense.  As  a  student  of  rhet- 
oric, he  lived  a  fast  and  loose  life  in  Carthage. 
Discontented  with  himself  and  with  the  world,  he 
became  a  disciple  of  Manichaeism,  whose  doctrines 
promised  solutions  for  all  the  world  riddles;  his 
mother  suffered  much  when  he  became  a 
Manichsean,  and  she  sorrowed  for  her  son  to  such 
an  extent  that  a  Bishop  said  to  her  in  consolation: 
*'  No  son  of  so  many  tears  can  ever  be  lost." 
Afterward  the  young  rhetorician  went  from  Car- 
thage to  Rome  in  order  to  practise  his  profession 
there.  From  Rome  he  went  to  Milan  and  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Bishop  Ambrosius,  whose  personal- 
ity made  a  powerful  impression  upon  him,  yet  he 
could  not  convert  himself  to  the  Church  faith.  A 
general  doubt,  the  natural  accompaniment  of  his 
moral  disintegration,  made  him  most  unhappy. 
Two  leaders  there  were  who  helped  him  out  of  his 
maze :  Plato  and  the  Apostle  Paul.  Plato  showed 
him  in  the  inwards  of  the  thinking  spirit  one,  and 
the  truest,  revelation  of  the  God  who  is  spirit  and 
truth;  in  the  Epistles  of  Paul,  he  found  the  con- 

lOI 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

firmation  of  his  own  experience  of  the  struggle 
between  the  flesh  and  the  spirit,  of  the  slavery  of 
man  and  of  the  rulership  of  his  natural  passions 
and  desires;  and  he,  too,  found  the  way  of  salvation 
through  divine  mercy.  That  was  the  culmination 
that  brought  him  to  a  decision.  He  decided  to  be- 
come a  Christian,  a  Catholic  Christian,  and  on  Eas- 
ter night  of  the  year  387,  he  permitted  himself  to 
be  baptized.  The  sacred  rite  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion upon  his  soul  and  held  him  without  cessa- 
tion to  that  Church  whose  best  armor  he  proved 
to  be  for  centuries  thereafter.  Soon  he  returned 
to  Africa,  became  Bishop  at  Hippo  and  lived  there 
in  monastic-like  association  with  friends  and  schol- 
ars, though  without  actual  rules  for  the  order.  He 
lived  a  restless,  active  life,  caring  for  the  souls  of 
others,  preaching,  and  writing. 

His  writings  served  the  purpose  of  edificatory 
reading  for  the  Church  and  the  attack  on  the  three 
main  heresies  of  the  time :  First,  the  Manichaeans 
who  taught  a  gnosis  similar  to  the  Persian  dualism 
and  held  human  nature  to  be  something  originally 
bad,  the  work  of  an  anti-God.  Second,  the  Pela- 
gians who,  contrariwise,  declared  human  nature  to 
be  good  with  a  freedom  for  all  good  which  could 
never  be  lost.  Third,  the  Donatists  who  withdrew 
from  the  Church  because  it  did  not  correspond  with 
their  ideal  of  saintliness.  These  were  the  three 
main  opponents  against  whom  Augustine's  activity, 
both  as  preacher  and  as  author,  was  directed ;  and 

102 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

in  his  theology,  the  various  sides  appear  as  one  or 
the  other  opponent  appeared,  so  that  they  never  fit 
together  without  contradiction.  This  makes  pre- 
sentation difficult,  but  as  far  as  is  possible  in  a  brief 
space,  I  will  attempt  to  sketch  it. 

Against  the  heretical  Manichseans,  Augustine 
stands  firmly  on  the  ground  of  the  Church  faith  to 
which,  however,  he  demanded  (agreeing  therein 
with  Origen)  the  complement  of  a  thinking  reason. 
He  says :  "  Authority  commands  faith  and  pre- 
pares for  reason ;  this,  then,  leads  to  the  understand- 
ing of  the  thing  believed;  not  as  though  we  were  to 
believe  in  order  to  set  aside  reason;  no,  God  does 
not  hate  in  us  that  which  He  has  created  in  us  as  an 
advantage  over  all  other  creatures.  That  which  we 
hold  firmly  in  the  security  of  belief,  is  to  be  made 
visible  by  the  light  of  reason.  As  a  reasoning  be- 
ing, the  soul  is  allied  with  the  supersensual  and  the 
unchangeable.  It  possesses  the  capacity  of  know- 
ing the  nature  of  truth,  just  as  the  eye  is  so  arranged 
that  it  can  know  the  visible  world."  But  where  are 
we  to  find  truth  ?  That  is  the  great  question.  The 
answer  runs  thus:  "  Wander  not  outside  of  your- 
self. Turn  inwardly  into  yourself,  for  the  truth 
dwells  in  the  inner  man,  and  if  you  find  your  na- 
ture changeable,  swing  yourself  up  beyond  your- 
self, strive  thither  where  the  light  of  reason  itself 
has  its  source,  seek  the  truth  in  the  silence  and  the 
leisure  of  the  spirit,  in  the  simplicity  of  the  heart, 
not  outside  in  space.     The   purer  the  spirit,   the 

103 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

better  able  is  it  to  see  the  truth ;  to  love  God  means 
to  know  God." 

Augustine's  judgment  concerning  the  philoso- 
phers was  more  favorable  in  his  youth  than  in  later 
years.  He  thought,  of  the  Platonists  especially, 
that  in  many  things  they  approached  Christianity 
and  that,  if  they  were  to  return  to-day  and  see  the 
Church,  they  would  acknowledge:  This  is  the 
realization  of  that  which  we  darkly  surmised.  "  The 
Christian  has  no  need  to  fear  the  truth  which  the 
philosophers  taught,  but  he  should  quietly  take  it 
over  from  them,  its  false  possessors.  A  good 
Christian  knows  that  the  truth  which  he  acknowl- 
edges belongs  to  his  Master,  wherever  he  may  find 
it."  According  to  the  conviction  of  Augustine,  the 
Christian  theologians  thus  have  an  advantage  over 
the  heathen  philosophers,  whose  opinions  were  ever 
subjective  and  whose  teachings  contradicted  the  one 
the  other,  while  the  Christian  has  firm  ground  for 
his  conviction  and  a  safe  guide  in  the  divine  revela- 
tion, both  as  Holy  Writ  and  the  Church.  Which 
of  these  two  norms,  however,  should  be  highest 
when  making  decisions?  Augustine's  answer  to 
this  question  varies  according  to  the  opponent  whom 
he  attacks.  Against  the  Donatists,  he  says :  "  I 
would  not  believe  the  Church  without  or  contrary  to 
Scripture."  Against  the  Manichseans  :  ''  I  would 
not  beheve  Scripture  if  the  view  of  the  Church  did 
not  lead  me  so  to  do."  He  never  gave  any  expres- 
sion which  might  harmonize  these  two  statements. 

104 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

He  simply  presupposes  that  these  two  norms  are 
not  contradictory.  In  doubtful  cases,  the  Church 
tradition  decides :  "  What  the  entire  Church  has 
maintained,  whatever  obtained  at  all  times,  that 
we  must  believe  that  was  handed  down  through 
apostolic  authority;  even  if  it  is  not  to  be  found 
literally  in  Scripture,  yet  it  must  have  flowed  from 
the  same  source  and  thus  achieved  apostolic  au- 
thority." That  became  the  fundamental  view  of 
the  Church  from  Augustine's  time  and  to  this  day 
has  remained  so  in  Catholicism. 

Let  us  look  at  the  doctrinal  structure  built  on  this 
basis.  Its  main  parts  are  the  dogmas  of  the  triune 
God,  of  man,  his  sin  and  redemption,  and  of  the 
Church  as  the  institution  for  redemption,  as  well  as 
the  God-State  destined  to  rule  the  world. 

As  a  kind  of  Christian  Plato,  one  might  say, 
Augustine  reveals  the  depths  of  his  religious  spirit 
by  the  way  in  which  he  deduces  the  consciousness 
of  God  from  pious  self-consciousness.  He  reasons 
thus:  In  our  changeable  and  imperfect  being  and 
knowledge  and  volition,  we  are  the  finite  image  of 
God  who  is  the  unchangeable  Being  in  all  changeable 
existence,  the  enduring  truth  and  universal  source 
of  wisdom  for  all  human  thinking,  the  perfect  beau- 
ty for  all  our  emotions,  the  complete  goodness,  the 
releasing  and  blessing  power  of  good  for  all  our 
volition.  As  such  perfect  eternal  truth,  beauty, 
goodness,  God  is  in  a  word  the  highest  good,  sum- 
mum  boniim;  to  cling  to  Him  is  the  true,  yes,  the 

105 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

only  complete  happiness  of  our  soul,  for  ''  in  that 
we  are  created  toward  Him,  our  hearts  can  find  no 
peace  until  they  rest  in  Him."  In  this  conviction, 
our  theologian  unites  the  thinking  based  on  Plato 
with  the  inner  experience  of  his  own  pious  spirit,  as 
he  himself  expresses  it  in  those  beautiful  words  of 
the  Confessions:  "  I  loved  thee  late,  thou  divine 
Beauty!  Thou  wast  in  me,  yet  was  I  without  and 
sought  thee  there.  Into  thy  beautiful  creation  did 
I  plunge  myself  with  my  ugliness;  for  thou  wast 
with  me,  yet  was  I  not  with  thee,  for  the  outer 
world  did  hold  me  far  from  thee;  then  didst  thou 
call  unto  my  deafness,  then  didst  thou  kindle  a  light 
in  my  blindness,  then  didst  thou  breathe  life  into 
me.  Thou  didst  touch  me,  and,  all  aglow,  I  longed 
for  thy  peace.  I  did  taste  thee,  and  am  now  a-hun- 
gry  and  athirst  for  thee." 

The  purely  Platonic  effort  to  think  away  all  tem- 
poralness  and  changeability,  all  limitations  and  op- 
positions, from  the  one  eternal  Being  of  God,  is 
remarkable.  Thus  the  persons  of  the  Trinity,  ac- 
cording to  Augustine,  are  at  bottom  only  different 
relationships  of  the  One  Being  comparable  to  the 
various  sides  of  our  spirit,  memory,  intellect,  and 
will,  which  can  be  differentiated  but  which  can 
never  be  separated,  the  one  from  the  other.  Thus 
the  divine  attributes  do  not  exist  one  alongside  the 
other,  but  rather  one  in  the  other.  Omnipotence  is 
at  the  same  time  Omniscience,  goodness  and  love 
are  at  the  same  time  righteousness  and  bliss.     Be- 

io6 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

yond  a  doubt  these  are  deep  thoughts,  but  more's 
the  pity  that  they  stand  in  irreconcilable  contra- 
diction to  those  other  teachings  of  Augustine,  such 
as  that  of  the  creation  of  the  world  in  time,  and 
particularly  that  of  the  double  ordinance  of  divine 
predestination  (of  which  we  are  to  speak  later)  in 
which  there  seems  to  be  revealed  an  inner  dualism 
of  the  divine  will.  These  disharmonies  in  Augus- 
tine's teaching  of  God  are  explained  simply  by  the 
varying  sources  and  motives,  partially  Platonic, 
partially  biblical-ecclesiastical,  partially  gnostic- 
dualistic  —  motives  which  crossed  and  recrossed 
frequently  in  the  thinking  of  this  rare  spirit. 

We  encounter  similar  disharmonies  in  his  doc- 
trine concerning  man.  Against  Manichsean  pessim- 
ism, Augustine  defended  the  optimism  of  the  Old 
Testament  dogma  of  creation  as  emphatically  as  did 
the  Greek  fathers.  That  dogma  holds  man  to  have 
been  created  good  with  freedom  for  good  and  with 
a  destiny  which  was  to  make  him  the  Image  of  God 
and  the  master  over  all  nature.  But  when  the  Pela- 
gians taught  that  this  freedom  for  good  was  so 
peculiar  to  our  species  that  It  was  the  permanent 
pre-supposltlon  of  all  moral  direction  and  education, 
Augustine  refused  to  agree,  but  maintained  rather 
that  the  original  condition  of  freedom  and  happi- 
ness of  man  had  been  lost  in  Paradise  Itself  through 
a  misuse  of  freedom  by  disobedience  to  the  divine 
command.  As  Augustine  himself  shows,  this  act 
emanated  from  the  evil  motives  of  pride  and  self- 

107 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

love,  which  were  then  present,  which  were  latent, 
and  which  simply  broke  through  in  the  Fall.  This, 
too,  was  not  only  inevitable  but,  after  all,  healing, 
for  only  thus  could  the  disease  be  cured  happily  in 
that  it  broke  out.  So  then  Augustine  can  speak  of 
"  the  happy  guilt  of  Adam,"  which  gave  rise  to  his 
salvation.  But  to  this  reasonable  view  how  can  we 
harmonize  the  statement  that  Adam's  fall  was  a 
voluntary  guilt  with  most  horrible  consequences  for 
the  whole  of  the  human  race;  that  as  a  punishment 
for  the  first  misuse,  the  freedom  for  good  was  lost 
to  men  thereafter  —  in  the  place  of  Paradise,  an 
abysmal  wickedness,  an  eternal,  continuous  destruc- 
tion came  over  all  humanity  as  the  penal  conse- 
quences of  Adam's  first  sin?  Because,  so  August- 
ine teaches,  all  are  descended  from  the  first  parents 
and  with  that  first  parent  in  whom  they  were  con- 
tained, they  have  sinned.  Thus  has  this  first  sin 
descended  upon  the  whole  race  of  his  descendants, 
so  that  ever  after  each  human  child  is  burdened  at 
birth  with  inherited  sinful  instincts,  with  sinful 
desire  and  with  damnable  guilt,  so  that  each  human 
child,  irrespective  of  whether  it  ever  wished  or  did 
anything  wicked,  became  heir  to  eternal  damnation 
because  he  was  burdened  with  the  guilt  of  Adam. 
It  would  be  the  prey  to  destruction  if  it  were  not 
saved  by  baptism,  which  frees  man  from  this  in- 
herited burden.  Various  motives,  without  doubt, 
were  active  in  making  up  this  pessimistic  judgment 
of   the   natural   man.     The   first   thought   is,   that 

io8 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

Augustine  had  been  a  Manichsean  at  first,  and  that 
the  after-effect  of  this  Manichseism  makes  its  ap- 
pearance in  this  crass  dogma  of  inherited  sin.  Then, 
too,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Augustine,  a  hot- 
blooded  youth  of  African  descent,  had  experienced 
the  deep  conflict  of  the  flesh  and  the  spirit  within 
himself,  the  unholy  slavery  of  the  will  to  the  desires. 
In  addition,  there  is  the  specifically  Church  interest 
of  the  Bishop  whose  saving  grace  of  the  Church 
could  be  glorified  by  contrast  with  the  sinfulness 
of  the  natural  man.  However,  the  deepest  motive 
was  that  inner  experience  of  his  own  Christian 
spirit,  the  misfortune  without  God  and  the  fortune 
won  through  God  and  in  God.  Listen  to  his  own 
words  in  the  confession :  "  Enter  into  my  heart 
and  make  it  drunken,  that  I  forget  my  wickedness 
and  embrace  Thee  as  my  one  possession,  say  to  my 
soul  '  I  am  thy  salvation.'  Let  me  hasten  at  Thy 
loving  call  and  cling  to  Thee.  I  would  die  in  order 
never  to  die,  so  that  I  see  Thee.  The  house  of  my 
soul  is  narrow,  do  Thou  widen  it.  It  is  all- 
encumbered,  make  Thou  it  clean.  Give  what  Thou 
commandest,  and  command  what  Thou  wilt." 

As  the  misfortune  in  the  inner  dispute  of  the  will 
with  itself  consists  in  this,  that  the  good  which  it 
actually  wills  it  does  not  actually  perform,  so  grace 
consists  in  that  the  good  does  not  remain  merely  an 
external  law,  but  becomes  the  object  of  voluntary 
love  and  so-  the  object  of  one's  own  willing  and 
joyous  acting.     Man  can  only  be  created  anew  from 

109 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

the  evil  to  the  good  will  through  the  eternally  good 
God.  This  is  an  unearned,  free  gift,  for  what  can 
a  man  deserve  before  he  loves  God,  and  how  could 
he  love  God  before  he  had  experienced  God's  love? 
As  such  an  unearned  free  gift,  grace  shows  itself 
to  men  from  the  very  beginning,  in  the  baptism  of 
little  children,  even,  who  receive  it  involuntarily. 
Hence,  freedom  of  the  will  is  not  the  pre-supposition 
or  condition  of  grace,  but  its  effect,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  grace  which  first  frees  the  will  from  its  natural 
slavery  to  sin,  fills  it  with  the  love  of  righteousness 
so  that  the  good  is  looked  upon  as  its  very  own 
nature  and  performed  through  innermost  impulse. 

However,  if  grace  is  the  sole  cause  of  salvation 
this  question  arises :  how  comes  it  that  grace  is  not 
active  for  all,  but  only  in  some?  The  answer 
reads :  The  reason  cannot  be  in  man,  for  men  are 
all  by  their  nature  equally  sinful,  so  that  not  one 
of  them  deserves  grace.  Hence,  the  reason  for  the 
limited  activity  of  grace  is  in  God  Himself,  namely 
in  His  double  ordinance  of  predestination,  inasmuch 
as  in  His  eternal  pre-knowledge  and  pre-volition,  He 
has  destined  some  to  salvation  and  others  to  damna- 
tion. For  the  elect,  to  whom  God  would  reveal  His 
will  of  grace,  it  is  made  real  through  word  and 
sacrament  and,  in  fact,  it  is  made  real  to  them  in- 
fallibly in  that  they  are  not  only  called  but  remain 
preserved  in  the  faith  until  the  end.  He  who  is 
once  chosen  can  never  fall  again.  The  damned  are 
hopelessly  and  unalterably  lost,  whatever  may  be 

no 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

their  deeds  or  efforts.  With  certainty  one  cannot 
say  who  has  been  chosen,  not  during  his  hfetime  or 
at  least  not  until  the  end  of  it,  if  he  has  persisted 
to  the  end.  This  uncertainty  of  each  concerning 
his  salvation  (salvation  which  has  been  fixed  upon 
in  the  secret  ordinance  of  God)  Augustine  says  is 
good,  for  it  occasions  in  man  that  he  remains 
humble  with  regard  to  the  ecclesiastical  means  of 
grace,  whereby,  at  least,  he  attains  a  relative  prob- 
ability of  the  salvation  of  his  soul.  In  the  end, 
then,  it  is  the  Church  spirit  of  Augustine  which 
softens  the  hardness  of  his  dogma  of  pre-destination 
and  explains  it.  For,  if  grace  is  bound  to  the 
ecclesiastical  means  of  salvation,  the  end  is  the  glori- 
fication of  the  Church  as  the  one  distributor  of 
salvation.  Cyprian's  saying,  extra  ecclesiam,  nulla 
saluSj  is  for  the  first  time,  theologically  based  by 
Augustine.  For  the  oriental  Church  this  thought 
was  ever  strange,  before  Augustine  as  well  as  after 
him. 

If  the  Church  is  the  vessel  containing  all  divine 
grace,  the  organ,  the  institution  for  the  distribution 
of  all  grace,  then  all  salvation  of  men  depends  on 
their  proper  relation  to  the  Church.  Augustine  is 
perfectly  logical  when  he  cries  at  the  schismatic 
Donatists :  "  Everything  may  be  had  outside  of  the 
Church  excepting  salvation;  and  even  if  one  believes 
that  one  is  living  a  good  life,  for  the  sake  of  this  one 
crime  of  separation  from  the  Church,  one  shall  not 
partake  of  life  but  of  the  wrath  of  God  which  rests 

in 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

on  those  who  separate  themselves."  Separation 
from  the  Church  is  a  cardinal  breach  of  love,  and 
v^ithout  love  no  salvation  can  exist.  When  the 
Donatists  said  that  the  decisive  characteristic  of  the 
true  Church  v^^as  moral  purity,  Augustine  replied 
that  this  was  rather  in  the  right  granted  to  the 
ecclesiastical  establishment  by  its  divine  founder,  the 
exclusive  possessor  and  distributor  of  grace  through 
the  ecclesiastical  means  of  grace.  And  when  the 
schismatics  pointed  to  their  own  righteousness  and 
enthusiastic  witnesses,  visions,  ecstasies,  and  granted 
prayers,  the  Catholic  Church  pointed  out  its  support 
in  the  righteousness  in  Christ  and  named  as  its  wit- 
ness, Holy  Writ.  "  Against  this  lightning  and 
thunder,  all  else  is  merely  the  smoke  that  blinds  on 
earth."  Church  salvation  rests  on  an  objective 
communion  whereas  everything  that  is  subjective 
depends  upon  obedience  and  self-sacrifice  or  ends  in 
empty  semblance  and  illusion.  This  is  the  expres- 
sion of  the  Catholic  consciousness  of  the  inclusion 
of  all  salvation  in  the  objective  Church  establish- 
ment and  its  priestly  activities,  which  remains  ever 
external  and  strange  toward  the  individual  spirit, 
the  reverse  of  Protestant  inwardness  and  freedom 
of  personal  life  in  God. 

Why  has  the  Catholic  Church  the  only  truth? 
Augustine  says  because  she  alone  rests  on  the  foun- 
dation of  the  Apostles  and  the  prophets,  because  she 
alone  has  the  unity  and  perpetuity  held  together 
by  the  possession  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  the  apos- 

112 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

tolic  Bishop's  office.  The  spirit  of  Christ  is,  there- 
fore, pecuHar  to  the  CathoHc  Church  alone,  because 
she  is  the  apostoHc,  that  is.  Bishop's  Church,  tracing 
back  her  Episcopal  organization  (which  is  obviously 
a  fiction)  to  the  Apostles  who,  for  their  part,  go 
back  to  Christ  himself.  According  to  Augustine, 
the  Church  is  also  the  Holy  Church;  even  though 
upon  earth  she  is  not  a  congregation  entirely  of 
saints,  but  consists  of  good  and  bad  members,  she  is 
nevertheless  the  holy;  because  she  possesses  the 
sacraments  and  the  Church  discipline,  she  has  the 
means  to  make  men  holy.  Baptism  especially  is  the 
reception  Into  membership  of  the  body  of  Christ, 
with  the  forgiveness  of  original  sin.  Because  this 
latter  is  born  with  the  children,  therefore  are  they 
freed  from  It  through  baptism  and  may  be  taken 
into  the  saving  arms  of  the  Church.  Here  it  is 
clearly  seen  how  the  dogma  of  the  universal  sinful- 
ness of  the  natural  man  and  that  of  the  supernatural 
institution  for  grace  of  the  Church  mutually  support 
and  condition  one  another.  As  the  possessor  of  the 
means  of  grace,  the  Church  is  naturally  the  infallible 
authority  on  belief  for  the  faithful.  What  the  uni- 
versal Church  teaches  by  the  mouth  of  her  Bishops 
as  apostolic  tradition,  that  alone  is  the  divine  truth 
revealed  by  Christ  as  against  the  multitude  of  errors 
of  heretics  and  schismatics. 

In  his  great  work.  De  Cimtatc  Dei,  Augustine 
described  the  Church  as  the  terrestrial  appearance 
of  the  God-State  In  opposition  to  the  Roman  world- 

113 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

state.  The  world-state  had  its  origin  in  the  pre- 
earthly  fall  of  the  evil  spirits,  and  its  earthly  begin- 
ning is  Cain's  murder  of  his  brother.  Its  course, 
then,  runs  through  the  world  realm  of  the  Assyrians 
and  ends  finally  in  the  Roman  Empire.  The  God- 
State  begins  with  the  good  world  of  angels  and  on 
earth  begins  with  Abel,  the  first  martyr.  It  con- 
tinues through  the  history  of  Israel  which  leads  on 
to  the  Christian  Church.  These  two  states  differ  not 
only  in  their  origins  and  courses,  but  also  in  the  in- 
nermost principle  of  their  being.  Self-love,  force, 
and  desire  for  rulership  govern  in  the  world-state. 
The  Empire  is  a  robber  state  and  all  the  civic  virtues 
of  its  members  are  no  better  than  glittering  crimes. 
While  the  peace  on  earth  guaranteed  by  the  state 
through  its  code  of  laws  is  a  relative  good  even  for 
the  citizens  of  the  God-State  (hence  the  Christians 
certainly  will  obey  the  laws  of  the  state  in  earthly 
matters),  nevertheless  the  legal  order  of  the  state  is 
only  an  organ  of  selfishness  which  really  serves  the 
demons  more  than  God,  and  aims  merely  at  the 
security  and  conservation  of  body,  life,  and  prop- 
erty, not  of  the  eternal  and  imperishable  possession. 
The  Church  alone,  which  has  as  its  object  the  eternal 
possession  of  seeing  God  beyond,  is  the  God-State 
which  rests  directly  upon  divine  right.  Hence  the 
Church  stands  far  above  the  earthly  state  in  dignity 
and  rights.  This  fundamental  view  of  the  Papacy 
is  here  expressed  with  entire  certainty.  The  state 
has  merely  the  duty  of  obeying  the  Church,  for  it  is 

114 


Aurelius  Augustinus 

human  while  she  is  divine.  According  to  Augus- 
tine, it  is  the  duty  and  obhgation  of  the  state  and  the 
nobihty  to  suppress  all  heretics  and  schismatics,  that 
is  all  opponents  of  the  Church,  if  need  be  even  with 
force.  Augustine  was  the  first  to  give  this  dire  in- 
terpretation to  the  phrase  Compellite.  intrare! 
Augustine  thinks  this  force  will  really  not  be  a 
severity  but  a  healing  medicine.  Thus  we  see  clearly 
the  difference  between  the  Augustine-Roman  and 
the  Greek  conception  of  the  Church.  According 
to  the  Greek  view,  the  Church  is  a  community  of 
dogmatic  belief,  of  ceremonial  celebration,  and  of 
ascetic  life;  the  attitude  toward  the  world  is  passive 
and  toward  the  state  submissive.  According  to 
Augustine,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Church  is  the 
hierarchically  organized  God-State  whose  task  it  is 
to  subordinate  the  world  to  the  Christian  spirit  and 
who  must  therefore  necessarily  strive  toward  a 
rulership  over  the  world  and  all  that  is  in  it.  For 
this  reason,  the  Eastern  Church  led  a  quiet,  contem- 
plative life  through  centuries,  while  the  Western 
Church,  through  its  rivalry  with  worldly  powers, 
stirred  the  world  but  also  made  history. 

I  repeat,  it  was  Augustine  who  impressed  his 
spirit  on  the  Western  Church.  From  him  goes 
forth  the  deep  religious  moral  interpretation  of 
Christianity  as  the  saving  and  educating  grace,  free- 
ing the  will  from  sin  and  guilt,  from  slavery  and 
misery.  Therein  Augustine  was  the  successor  of 
the  Apostle  Paul  to  an  extent  such  as  no  theologian 

115 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

before  him;  and  at  the  same  time,  he  was  the  pre- 
cursor of  mediaeval  mysticism  and  even  of  the  Ref- 
ormation which  attached  itself  to  him  in  various 
ways.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  concede  that 
Augustine  did  ally  grace  to  external  Church  media 
and  mediators.  By  his  view  of  the  hierarchically 
organized  institution  of  the  Church  as  the  earthly 
appearance  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  founded  directly 
by  God,  he  laid  the  foundation  for  mediaeval 
Catholicism  with  its  religious  mechanism  and  its 
striving  for  theocratic  rulership  of  the  world. 
Thus  we  may  say  that  the  two  worlds  which  later 
went  apart,  and  to  this  day  separate  the  peoples, 
rested  peaceably  together  in  his  breast.  He  held 
harmoniously  the  ecclesiastical  subjection  and 
externality  of  Catholic  Christianity  with  the  per- 
sonal subjectivity  and  freedom  of  Protestant  Chris- 
tianity. 


ii6 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   GERMANIC-ROMAN    CHURCH 

De  Civitate  Dei,  the  book  by  Augustine,  the  old 
Church  father  of  whom  we  were  speaking  at  the 
close  of  the  last  lecture,  was  the  favorite  reading  of 
the  Emperor  Charlemagne,  the  founder  of  the 
Germanic-Roman  Church  establishment  and  Em- 
pire; thus,  in  a  sense,  the  latter  might  be  regarded 
as  the  realization  of  Augustine's  idea  of  the  ruler- 
ship  of  the  world  by  the  Church  as  the  civitas  Dei. 
Obviously  that  old  Church  father  had  no  idea  that 
those  same  Germans  who  just  at  the  time  of  the 
writing  of  that  book,  were  pouring  down  over  the 
Roman  provinces,  devastating  wherever  they  hap- 
pened to  be  and  creating  barbarism  —  that  these 
barbarian  tribes  were  destined  to  be  the  bearers  of 
the  world-governing  Church-State.  Let  us  see  how 
this  came  about.  A  brief  glance  at  the  origins  of 
German  Christianity  is  necessary. 

The  first  German  Christians  were  Goths  who 
were  converted  by  Christian  missionaries  or  captive 
Christians  on  the  other  side  of  the  Danube;  chief 
among  them  was  Ulfilas  (Woelflein)  who  had  been 
sent  to  the  Byzantine  court  as  the  ambassador  of 
his  people,  was  converted  there,  baptized  in  341  and 

"7 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

ordained  as  Gothic  Bishop.  He  translated  the 
Bible,  at  least  the  greater  part  of  it,  into  the  Gothic 
language  and  his  translation  is  the  oldest  monument 
of  the  early  period  of  our  tongue.  The  Christianity 
of  this  Ulfilas  and  his  Goths  was  not  Catholic  but 
Arian,  such  as  that  which  was  general  in  the  Orient 
before  Theodosius;  and  without  doubt  this  form 
was  easier  and  more  comprehensible  to  the  newly 
converted  heathen  than  the  complicated  Catholic 
dogma  of  the  Trinity.  It  must  be  emphasized,  also, 
that  these  Goths  and  Germans,  heretical  from  the 
viewpoint  of  the  Church,  were  almost  always  patient 
with  the  Catholic  inhabitants  of  conquered  Roman 
provinces.  Thus  Aurelius  Cassiodorus,  the  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Emperor  Theodoric,  says:  "  We  can- 
not force  our  religion  upon  others,  since  it  is  impos- 
sible to  force  anyone  to  believe  against  his  will." 
That  is  an  important  speech,  which  sounds  like  a 
premonition  of  future  German  Protestantism. 

The  difference  of  faith  between  the  conquerors 
and  the  conquered,  the  difference  between  Arian  and 
Athanasian  Catholic  faith,  was  a  heavy  barrier  to 
the  fusion  of  both  parts,  and  thereby  to  the  union 
and  consoHdation  of  the  new  German  Empire. 
Hence,  it  was  of  great  importance  for  the  future 
that  Chlodwig,  the  king  of  the  Franks,  through 
his  Burgundian  wife,  the  Princess  Clothikle,  became 
a  convert  to  Catliohcism.  Whether  this  was  be- 
cause of  a  vow  made  in  the  dire  necessity  of  the 
Alemannian  fight  is  something  that  need  not  be  con- 

ii8 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

sidered  here.  This  much  is  certain:  that  person- 
ally Chlodwig  was  as  little  of  a  good  Christian  as 
Constantine  after  him.  With  both  of  them,  the 
deciding  motive  was  policy.  Nevertheless,  for  the 
Church,  it  was  a  favorable  turn  fraught  with  many 
consequences.  The  example  of  the  mighty  Franks, 
King  as  well  as  people,  was  soon  followed  by  the 
other  Germans,  the  West  Goths  in  Spain,  Longo- 
bards  and  East  Goths  in  northern  Italy.  The 
Anglo-Saxons  in  Britain  were  converted  by  Bene- 
dictine monks  sent  by  Pope  Gregory,  and  thus 
from  the  beginning  were  connected  with  Rome. 
Out  of  this  Anglo-Saxon  Church  went  forth  Win- 
fried  or  Boniface,  who  possesses  a  certain  right 
to  the  title  of  "  Apostle  of  the  Germans."  Boniface 
was  a  missionary  in  Hesse,  Bavaria,  and  Thuringia. 
He  founded  monasteries  and  Churches  and  bound 
them,  as  well  as  the  others  which  had  been  founded 
by  Irish  monks  before  him,  with  closest  ties  to 
Rome.  He  certainly  did  so  optima  fide,  and  per- 
haps it  was  necessary  because  by  this  connection 
alone  was  it  possible  for  him  to  defend  himself 
against  the  obstinate  German  Christians,  or  rather, 
to  organize  and  discipline  them.  When  he  attempt- 
ed to  convert  the  heathen  Friesians  in  his  old  age, 
he  suffered  a  martyr's  death  in  755.  The  haughty 
love  of  freedom  of  the  Saxons,  who  lived  between 
the  Elbe  and  the  Harz,  held  out  longest  against 
conversion.  It  was  only  after  many  bloody  upris- 
ings put  down  by  the  victorious  sword  of  Karl,  that 

119 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

they   submitted  to  the  Prankish   Empire   and  the 
Cathohc  Church. 

Naturally  such  an  accepted  Christianity  could 
be  little  better  in  the  beginning  than  a  masked 
heathenism.  It  could  hardly  be  otherwise.  Hea- 
then customs  and  festivals  were  continued  under 
Christian  names  and  interpretations :  for  examples, 
the  Yule  feast  became  Christmas,  the  feast  of  the 
spring  goddess,  Ostara,  became  the  Easter  festival 
(hence  the  name),  the  midsummer  feast  became 
John's  Day,  the  autumnal  feast  of  all  souls  became 
All  Saints'  Day.  Nor  did  the  old  gods  disappear 
entirely  from  the  consciousness  of  the  old  Germans  ; 
now,  as  then,  there  was  mysterious  fear  of  their 
incalculable  power,  except  that  they  were  no  longer 
thought  of  as  gods  but  as  demons,  and  in  this  guise, 
protection  against  them  was  sought  through  magic. 
The  magic  which  forced  its  way  into  the  Christian 
religion  was  none  other  than  the  old  cult  forms  of 
the  heathen  Germans.  The  rites  which  had  been 
formerly  practised  for  the  gods  were  now  changed 
into  magic  against  the  evil  powers  of  the  demons. 
This  was  especially  true  in  the  dangerous  weeks 
between  Advent  and  the  day  of  the  Three  Holy 
Kings,  on  which  the  old  Wodan,  the  wild  hunter, 
and  the  Goddess  Freya,  Frau  Holle,  ride  through 
the  air.  Many  popular  customs  are  maintained 
to  this  day,  particularly  those  customs  practised 
in  the  Christmas  holidays.  The  Church  opposed 
only    the    plainly    heathen    superstition,    such    as 

120 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

conjuring  the  dead,  prophecying  by  the  flight  of 
birds  and  by  their  entrails,  —  as  to  the  rest,  that 
which  was  present  remained  and  thus  Christian 
superstition  was  augmented.  Bishop  Gregory  of 
Tours  expressly  declares  as  godless  the  use  of  the 
terrestrial  aid  of  a  physician  instead  of  the  aid  of 
the  saints  and  the  relics.  The  moral  influence  of 
the  Church,  too,  was  weak,  and  it  faced  a  very  diffi- 
cult task  for,  with  continuous  war,  the  crude  bar- 
barism of  the  victors  led  to  a  terrible  confusion  of 
morals.  It  was  particularly  bad  when  the  weak 
Merovingian  House  ruled  in  France. 

A  new  epoch  did  not  begin  until  the  strong  Karo- 
lingian  rule  ordered  public  life,  made  it  permanent, 
and  formed  a  close  alliance  with  the  Church.  From 
that  time  on,  emperor  and  priest  stood  in  mutual 
relation,  a  relation  which  in  the  beginning  was  a 
mutual  working  together,  a  mutual  support,  but 
which  ended  in  a  stern  struggle  by  which  both  sides 
destroyed  one  another  in  time.  As  early  as  Pipin, 
the  Emperor  had  his  accession  to  the  throne  — 
though  contrary  to  formal  rights  —  sanctioned  by 
the  Roman  pope,  Zachary.  He  simply  based  his 
justification  of  this  move  on  Old  Testament  ex- 
amples, where  it  is  true  there  is  mention  of  not  a 
few  palace  revolutions,  as  that  of  Samuel  and  David 
or  in  the  history  of  Elisha  and  Jehu.  Such  palace 
revolutions,  which  had  been  put  into  action  by  holy 
men,  served  as  a  justification  for  the  Pope  when  he 
sanctioned  Pipin's  illegal  accession  to  the  throne. 


»The  Development  of  Christianity 

For  this,  the  new  KaroHngian  King  had  to  show 
his  gratitude  when  the  Pope  (the  successor  of 
Zachary)  called  upon  Pipin  for  help  against  the 
threatening  forces  of  the  Longobards.  Pipin 
went,  conquered  the  Longobards,  took  a  portion  of 
their  territory  which  had  formerly  been  under  Greek 
rule,  and  gave  it  to  the  Pope  as  permanent  Church 
property.  At  the  same  time  he  had  himself  de- 
clared Protector.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the 
Church  State. 

The  example  of  his  father  was  followed  by  his 
greater  son,  Charlemagne.  The  mighty  ruler  of 
an  empire  which  extended  from  the  Ebro  to  the 
Eider  and  extended  as  far  south  as  Benevent,  lived 
and  fought  for  the  ideal  of  a  Christian  world 
empire,  for  the  reaHzation  of  which  he  considered 
his  life  cast.  He  ruled  not  only  the  State,  but  also 
the  Church,  and  expressly  called  himself  her  pro- 
tector and  helper.  In  fact,  it  was  only  the  formal 
recognition  of  an  actual,  existing  relation  when  Leo 
III  on  Christmas  Day  in  the  year  800  crowned 
Charlemagne,  in  Rome,  the  Roman  Emperor.  In 
the  eyes  of  the  whole  Western  Christian  world,  he 
thus  became  the  rightful  successor  of  the  Roman 
Emperors  with  all  their  claims  to  world-rulership. 
By  this  confirmation  of  Pipin's  doing,  the  Pope 
became  independent  of  the  Byzantine  court,  but,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  he  became  dependent  upon  the  new 
Roman  and  German  Emperor.  The  Church  again 
became  an  imperial  Church,  as  it  had  been  under 

122 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

Constantine  a  political  institution  which  bought  the 
protection  of  the  state  at  the  high  price  of  its  de- 
pendence upon  a  political  power.  But  it  must  be 
conceded  that  this  dependence  of  the  Church  upon 
German  imperial  supremacy  was  beneficial  only,  and 
served  her  well  during  the  wise  rulership  of  the 
great  Charlemagne.  It  served  as  a  sound  inner 
development  of  Christian  culture,  an  education  of 
the  then  very  barbaric  Germans  to  moral  Christian 
manhood.  The  privileges  and  duties  of  the  clerics 
were  accurately  regulated  by  the  Emperor,  their 
political  activities  narrowed,  the  wicked  customs  of 
the  sale  of  spiritual  offices  abolished,  and  the  regular 
election  of  the  Bishop,  subject  to  confirmation  by 
the  King,  re-established.  Through  the  embassadors 
whose  duty  it  was  to  visit  the  provinces  annually 
and  make  reports  to  the  Emperor,  he  reserved  the 
right  to  decision  on  all  temporal  and  spiritual  re- 
lations and  conditions  in  his  realm.  Strong  laws 
were  made  concerning  Church  customs  —  concern- 
ing baptism  (naturally,  the  baptism  of  children), 
concerning  regular  fasting  on  Church  fast  days, 
concerning  the  burial  of  the  dead  instead  of  heathen 
cremation.  At  the  same  time,  the  Emperor  occu- 
pied himself  with  furthering  the  education  of  his 
people.  He  established  a  court  school  of  the  higher 
grade  under  the  scholar,  Alcuin,  and  sent  forth  to 
the  clergy  a  remarkable  proclamation  in  which  they 
are  admonished  not  to  neglect  their  scientific  culture, 
but  to  cultivate  it,  in  order  that  they  may  the  more 

123 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

easily  and  the  more  corrxtly  enter  into  the  secrets 
of  Holy  Writ;  furthermore,  that  they  should  admit 
only  such  men  as  had  the  capacity  to  learn  and  the 
instinct  to  teach  others.  These  were  well  directed 
words,  for  were  there  not  many  priests  who  scarcely 
knew  the  art  of  reading  and  writing?  Besides, 
Charlemagne  desired  that  the  German  mother- 
tongue  be  held  in  honor  alongside  the  learned  Latin, 
the  language  of  the  scholars.  He  himself  made  the 
attempt  to  write  a  German  grammar.  He  had  the 
German  folk-songs  gathered  in  order  to  hand  them 
down  to  posterity.  Unfortunately,  in  consequence 
of  the  indolence  and  antipathy  of  the  clergy,  these 
have  been  lost.  Thus,  it  is  not  enough  to  call  Em- 
peror Charlemagne  the  Protector  of  the  Church :  he 
must  also  be  called  the  spirited  educator  of  the  Ger- 
man people  to  Christian  culture. 

The  weakness  and  lack  of  harmony  among  the 
successors  of  Charlemagne  gave  certain  energetic 
Popes  of  the  ninth  century,  —  such  men  as  Nicholas 
I  and  Hadrian  H  —  manifold  opportunity  to  lay 
claim  to  rulership  not  only  over  bishops  and  arch- 
bishops, but  also  over  princes  and  the  Emperor. 
They  did  this  in  such  fashion  that  it  was  actually 
new,  even  though  they  based  it  on  fictitious  docu- 
ments of  ancient  date.  This  falsification  of  docu- 
ments, the  so-called  pseudo-Isidorian  Decrees,  which 
originated  in  France  about  the  middle  of  the  ninth 
century,  served  from  that  time  on  as  the  principal 
weapon  of  the  papacy  in  its  struggle  for  world- 

124 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

rulership,  both  against  the  bishops'  hierarchy  and, 
especially,  against  the  temporal  powers.  Apparent 
as  was  the  forgery  of  the  pseudo-Isidorian  docu- 
ments, they  yet  soon  found  acceptance  everywhere. 
The  reason  for  this  was  that  they  corresponded  to 
the  spirit  of  the  times  and  helpfully  met  the  personal 
wishes  and  interests  of  many  a  cleric  for  whom  it 
was  more  convenient  to  be  dependent  upon  the  dis- 
tant Popes  than  upon  the  all  too  near  archbishops 
or  dukes,  princes,  and  kings.  Partially  religious 
motives,  partially  temporal  interests,  aided  the 
principle  of  the  Isidorian  Decrees  to  victory,  the 
principle  of  the  sole  rulership  of  the  Pope  in  the 
entire  Church  among  all  peoples.  Obviously,  it  all 
depended  upon  the  kind  of  man  who  was  at  the  head 
of  the  Church,  whether  he  was  one  who  enjoyed  the 
respect  of  the  Christian  peoples  and  was  filled  with 
Christian  earnestness,  or  whether  he  was  a  cheap 
creature  of  the  temporal  powers,  as  was  the  case 
in  the  first  half  of  the  tenth  century,  when  the  Popes 
were  completely  under  the  influence  of  wicked  in- 
triguing women.  This  darkest  chapter  of  the 
history  of  the  Popes  is  a  chronique  scandaleiisc,  the 
most  interesting  point  of  which  is  that  the  Papacy 
was  not  entirely  lost  in  the  bog.  Help  came  from 
two  sides  to  save  it  —  on  the  one  hand,  the  German 
Emperors,  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  new  revival 
of  the  Church  spirit  by  the  monastic  orders. 

The  great  Saxon  Emperor,  Otto  I,  deposed  the 
unworthy  John  XII,  and  was  the  first  one  to  force 

125 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

the  Roman  nobility  and  clergy  never  again  to  install 
a  Pope  without  the  sanction  of  the  Emperor.  Of 
course,  they  only  kept  their  oath  as  long  as  Otto  was 
there  with  his  force  of  arms.  Otto  I,  II,  and  III, 
dissipated  their  best  forces  at  the  Sisyphus  task  of 
restoring  discipline  and  order  at  Rome.  When, 
after  Otto  Ill's  early  death,  Roman  excesses  had 
again  reached  their  highest  point,  it  was  a  German 
Emperor,  the  energetic  Henry  III,  who  took  up  the 
cause  of  the  Papacy,  deposed  three  unworthy  Popes 
at  once,  and  installed  in  their  stead  Suitger,  the 
worthy  Bishop  of  Bamberg,  as  Clement  the  Second. 
Obviously,  these  interferences  in  Roman  disorder 
were  looked  upon  by  the  German  Emperors  as 
though  the  restoration  of  order  had  been  their  duty. 
They  felt  themselves  to  be  the  protectors  of  the 
Church ;  they  believed  that  they  were  acting  for  the 
good  of  the  Church  and,  in  fact,  such  was  the  case. 
But  did  they  reap  any  thanks  from  Rome?  The 
Popes  felt  themselves  deeply  humiliated  by  this 
interference  of  a  temporal  power  and  were  thus 
irritated  to  a  lively  reaction,  to  an  assertion  of  their 
independence  as  against  the  empire.  Again  and 
again,  the  Emperors  saved  the  Papacy  from  the 
morass  of  Roman  factions,  and  for  this  the  Church 
charged  them  with  unjustifiable  use  of  force  and 
demanded  independence  of  the  power  of  the  German 
Emperor.  Strange!  It  was  just  about  that  time 
that  a  new  and  powerful  Church  spirit  awoke, 
emanating    from    the    monks,    especially   those    of 

126 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

Cluny.  The  spirit  of  mediaeval  Christianity  which 
strove  to  rule  the  world  by  denying  it  found  its 
most  spirited  and  forceful  instrument  in  the  monk, 
Hildebrand,  who  had  been  the  actual  soul  of  Ro- 
man papal  policy  under  the  four  Popes  succeed- 
ing Clement  II  until  he  himself,  in  1073,  ascended 
the  throne  of  Peter  under  the  name  of  Gregory 
VII. 

The  first  step  which  this  powerful  man  took  was 
to  put  into  practice  the  theory  that  had  long  obtained 
but  had  been  entirely  disregarded  as  a  Church  regu- 
lation, the  celibacy  of  the  priesthood.  As  was 
natural,  Gregory  met  with  the  most  lively  opposition 
of  the  priests,  especially  of  the  lowest  clerics,  in 
every  country,  particularly  Germany  and  England. 
But  the  Pope  fell  back  upon  the  voice  of  the  people 
as  his  support.  By  far  the  great  majority  of  the 
mass  of  the  people  were  completely  in  sympathy 
with  the  mediaeval  belief  in  the  ascetic  ideal  repre- 
sented by  the  monks ;  they  wished  to  see  in  the  priest 
the  representative  of  this  ideal,  and  thus  they  were 
easily  prepared  to  support  the  stern,  heartless  de- 
mand of  Gregory  and  to  put  it  through  with  their 
fists. 

The  second  demand  of  the  Pope  touched  the 
freedom  of  the  Church  in  the  choice  of  its  servants, 
especially  the  bishops.  Until  now,  the  latter  had 
been  dependent  upon  the  feudal  lord  by  reason  of 
their  feudal  possessions,  and  by  investiture  with  ring 
and   staff  obligated   themselves  to  him  in    feudal 

127 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

loyalty.  Gregory  pronounced  this  the  sin  of 
simony,  that  is  the  sale  of  spiritual  offices  for 
worldly  possessions.  He  said  that  it  was  not  fit  that 
the  hands  entrusted  with  the  sacraments  should  be 
placed  in  the  bloody  hands  of  a  layman  and  that  the 
holy  insignia  should  be  received  from  him.  That 
was  old  Church  custom,  truly,  but  it  had  long  been 
in  disuse ;  the  acceptance  of  temporal  estates  was  as 
much  In  the  interests  of  the  bishops  as  of  the  nobles, 
who  thus  secured  the  Church  power  for  themselves 
by  making  bishops  of  the  knights ;  in  them  they  had 
true  vassals,  binding  these  bishops  to  themselves 
as  feudal  lords  over  them  and  obligating  them  to 
serve  their  purposes.  In  this  struggle,  Gregory 
found  himself  opposed  by  the  nobles  and  the  higher 
clergy  who  did  not  desire  to  give  up  their  feudal 
territory. 

Thirdly,  Gregory  wanted  to  have  the  supervision 
over  the  princes  themselves,  in  his  capacity  as  God's 
political  representative  whose  duty  it  was  to  see  that 
the  laws  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  were  maintained 
in  every  country  against  the  whim  of  earthly 
princes;  he  felt  himself  entitled  to  depose  princes 
who  opposed  him  and  to  release  their  subjects  from 
their  oaths  of  loyalty.  Gregory  demanded  of 
Henry  IV  the  following  oath :  "  I  swear  fealty  to 
Saint  Peter  and  his  deputy,  the  Pope;  all  which  he 
prescribes  I  shall  follow,  as  is  proper  for  a  good 
Christian."  For  this  general  office  of  judge,  he 
referred  to  the  Gospel  statement  of  binding  and 

128 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

loosing,  in  which  Jesus  made  no  one  an  exception, 
not  even  the  lords  and  princes;  all  of  them  are  made 
subject  to  Saint  Peter  and  his  deputy.  In  this,  too, 
the  mood  of  the  period  and  the  needs  of  the  people 
met  harmoniously  the  papal  desire  for  rulership. 
For  the  people  had  long  been  in  the  habit  of  looking 
to  the  spiritual  ruler  in  Rome  for  aid  against  the 
injustice  of  their  temporal  rulers.  The  idea  of 
Church  rulership  was  not  only  Gregory's  personal 
thought,  but  had  for  a  long  time  governed  the  think- 
ing of  the  mediaeval  peoples.  Victory  was  made 
much  easier  by  the  moral  weakness  and  whim  of 
King  Henry  IV,  which  had  stirred  the  popular  con- 
sciousness and  had  given  justifiable  ground  for  irri- 
tation and  complaint.  Thus  the  Pope  might  appear 
to  the  German  people  as  the  representative  of  divine 
justice  against  royal  injustice.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, the  struggle  between  Emperor  and  Pope, 
brought  about  by  Henry's  rude  action,  could  have 
no  other  end  than  the  one  it  had  —  the  deep  humilia- 
tion and  degradation  of  Henry  at  Canossa.  But 
here,  too,  the  Pope  overstretched  the  bow  by  his 
ruthless  severity.  The  brusque  humiliation  of  the 
German  King  irritated  the  feeling  of  the  German 
people  and  thus  the  majority  turned  from  the  Pope 
back  to  the  King.  Excommunicated  once  more, 
Henry  was  thus  able  to  cross  the  Alps  with  a  great 
army  and  sit  in  judgment  upon  the  Pope.  In  his 
extremity,  the  Pope  called  upon  the  Normans  for 
help  and  they  came,  but  in  what  fashion!     They 

129 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

plundered  and  they  burned  Rome  so  that  the 
Romans,  in  despair,  execrated  the  Pope ;  and  when 
the  Normans  withdrew,  the  Pope  had  to  follow 
them.  He  went  to  Salerno  and  died  there  in  1085, 
unhumiliated  and  certain  in  his  faith  of  the  justice 
of  his  cause.  His  last  words  were :  "  I  have  loved 
righteousness  and  hated  unrighteousness,  and  there- 
fore I  die  in  exile." 

Now,  what  do  you  think:  Are  we  to  condemn 
this  Pope  ?  Certainly  he  was  a  hard,  proud,  incon- 
siderate man  who  ruthlessly  trod  upon  the  holiest 
feelings  of  men,  who  tore  wives  and  children  from 
the  sides  of  countless  priests,  who  urged  citizens  on 
against  their  exiled  princes,  and  who  lighted  the 
torch  of  civil  war  in  our  fatherland.  However, 
much  as  all  this  may  anger  us,  we  must  concede  that 
he  did  not  do  any  of  this  through  personal  pride  or 
vanity,  but  he  was  impelled  and  supported  by  the 
idea  of  the  unlimited  rulership  of  the  Church  over 
the  world  which  was  the  then  governing  ideal  of 
mediaeval  Christianity.  Whatever  of  the  activities 
of  Gregory  H  may  outrage  us  morally,  it  must  not 
be  put  upon  him  personally  but  rather  as  the  error 
of  the  Catholic  system,  that  Christianity  externaliz- 
ing the  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  visible 
Church;  with  the  opinion  that  the  organized  priest 
Church  with  its  head  in  Rome  is  a  direct  foundation 
of  Christ;  and  with  the  superiority  of  this  pseudo- 
divine  foundation  over  the  truly  divine  order  of 
society  and  over  the  laws  of  conscience.     Out  of 

130 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

these  errors  of  the  Catholic  system  there  followed, 
as  a  natural  consequence,  all  the  conduct  of  the  great 
Pope,  Gregory  II;  to  us  that  conduct  naturally 
seems  outrageous.  Nevertheless,  we  must  concede 
that  he  was  a  man  of  such  power  as  is  not  often 
met  with  in  the  history  of  the  world.  His  work 
lasted  long  beyond  his  life.  His  influence  became 
greater  and  greater,  reaching  its  highest  point  in 
Innocent  III.  From  that  time  on,  it  waned ;  it  dis- 
integrated, and  finally  became  submerged  in  the 
spirit  of  the  new  age  which  arrived  at  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  untruth  of  mediaeval  Christianity  in 
general. 

We  cannot  follow,  here,  the  individual  phases  of 
its  development,  but  I  will  point  out  a  few  of  the 
principal  ones. 

Under  Henry  V,  the  son  of  that  Henry  who  had 
been  humiliated  at  Canossa,  disputes  broke  out  con- 
cerning the  investiture,  which  ended  in  the  so-called 
Concordat  of  Worms  in  1122.  There  the  Emperor 
yielded  up  the  investiture  with  the  spiritual  insignia 
and  reserved  the  right  of  decision  in  disputed 
elections;  he  yielded  with  the  condition  that  the 
bishop  elected  was  to  receive  the  fief  of  the  realm 
in  return  for  his  performance  of  that  which  was 
just,  the  feudal  oath.  That  was  the  only  conces- 
sion, practically  of  little  importance,  which  the  Pope 
made  to  the  Emperor.  As  for  the  rest,  by  the  free 
election  and  investiture  of  the  Bishops,  there  was 
thus  created  a  development  of  the  papal  power  such 

131 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

as  had  never  existed  before.  This  paved  the  way 
for  the  victorious  rulership  of  the  Papacy  as  against 
the  Emperor.  The  rest  of  this  struggle  makes  up 
the  sad  history  of  the  imperial  House  of  the 
Stauffen. 

Frederick  Barbarossa  did  not  want  to  have  his 
imperial  rights  diminished  in  the  face  of  the  claims 
of  Hadrian  IV.  He  held  it  to  be  wrong  that  the 
Germans  should  obey  a  strange  Bishop.  He  cher- 
ished the  idea  of  the  separation  of  the  German 
Church  from  Rome  and  the  foundation  of  a  national 
Church  with  Treves  as  its  capital.  Unfortunate^, 
these  never  became  more  than  wishes;  the  German 
Church  would  have  been  something  entirely  differ- 
ent. However,  the  realization  of  this  plan  was 
impossible,  for  it  was  in  opposition  to  the  inter- 
national, universal  world-policy  of  the  imperial 
Stauffens.  This  weakness  which  lay  in  their  uni- 
versal world-policy  was  soon  spied  by  the  keen  Ro- 
man Popes,  particularly  Alexander  HI.  This  Pope 
knew  how  to  use  the  national  mood  of  the  northern 
Italian  cities,  which  sought  freedom  from  German 
pressure,  against  his  enemy,  Frederick  I.  As  is  well 
known,  there  followed  that  unfortunate  war  in 
which  the  Stauffen  emperor  was  deserted  by  the 
Guelph  prince  and  suffered  the  defeat  of  Legnano. 
This  resulted  in  the  Peace  of  Benevent  and  a  treaty 
with  the  Pope  on  the  basis  of  the  Concordat  of 
Worms.  At  the  same  time,  the  hierarchical  prin- 
ciple  won   a   victory  over  Henry  II   of   England. 

132 


The  Germanic-Roman  Church 

When  Thomas  ä  Becket,  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury, was  murdered  by  Norman  knights  in  the 
church  itself,  the  anger  of  the  people  was  kindled 
and  they,  worshipping  the  murdered  man  as  a  saint, 
held  the  King  responsible  for  the  murder  and 
brought  things  to  such  a  pass  that  nothing  remained 
for  the  King  but  to  do  penance  in  the  Church. 
And  in  what  fashion?  Over  the  grave  of  the  mur- 
dered Archbishop,  his  most  hated  opponent,  the 
King  had  to  submit  to  public  chastisement. 

When  Innocent  III,  a  man  of  pre-eminent  talent 
and  culture,  ascended  the  throne  of  Peter,  political 
conditions  were  favorable  to  his  plans.  In  Ger- 
many, he  was  twice  able  to  give  the  King's  crown 
with  a  free  hand ;  first  he  gave  it  to  Otto  of  Bruns- 
wick, and  when  he  found  him  no  longer  tractable, 
Innocent  took  back  the  crown  and  put  it  on  the 
head  of  his  ward,  the  young  Stauffen,  Frederick  II. 
During  his  lifetime,  the  latter  maintained  peace  with 
his  guardian  and  respect  for  the  Pope.  Later  we 
shall  see  how  all  this  changed  after  the  death  of 
Innocent.  In  the  marital  troubles  of  the  French 
King,  Philip  Augustus,  Innocent  showed  himself 
to  be  the  upholder  of  the  indissolubility  of  the 
marriage  bond  and  forced  the  French  King  to  sub- 
mission by  the  dreadful  weapon  of  the  interdiction 
of  the  entire  French  Church.  Innocent  used  the 
same  weapon  against  John  of  England,  but  went 
a  step  further.  He  freed  the  whole  English  peo- 
ple from  their  oath  of  loyalty  and  directly  demanded 

133 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

that  the  King  of  France  ascend  the  EngHsh  throne. 
Thereupon  John  reHnquished  his  lands  in  order  to 
receive  them  back  as  a  fief  from  the  papal  legate. 
This  was  such  a  humiUation  of  the  English  na- 
tional feeling  that  the  aristocracy  of  the  country  — 
nobles  and  clergy  —  met  together  in  order  to  lay 
the  foundation  of  national  freedom  from  the  power 
of  the  Popes  and  from  that  of  their  own  King,  in 
the  Magna  Charta.  Here,  for  the  first  time,  the 
papal  might  was  defeated  by  the  might  of  national 
sei  f -decision ;  that  was  an  important  event,  which 
later  found  frequent  repetition.  In  12 15,  at  the 
Lateran  Synod,  to  which  Bishops  from  all  Christian 
countries,  even  of  the  Greek  Church,  had  come.  In- 
nocent celebrated  his  last  and  most  glorious  tri- 
umph. Then  Innocent  showed  himself  to  be  the  un- 
hampered lawgiver  concerning  the  belief  and  dogma 
of  the  Christian  world.  He  decided  upon  the  regu- 
lar duty  of  confession,  the  inquisition, —  that  is  the 
searching  out  and  extermination  of  all  heresy, — 
and  finally,  the  command  forbidding  the  reading  of 
the  Bible  by  laymen.  These  laws  all  served  to 
strengthen  the  clergy  in  its  deep-seated  power  over 
the  innermost  thinking  and  feeling  of  the  people, 
so  that  every  contradiction  and  opposition  to  the  uni- 
versal power  of  the  papal  church  was  strangled  at 
birth.  These  instruments  of  power  were  fearfully 
employed  through  the  centuries.  And  yet,  in  the 
end,  what  could  they  do  against  that  power  which 
is  firmer  than  the  rock  of  Peter  —  against  the  rea- 
son and  the  conscience  of  a  human  personality? 

134 


CHAPTER  VII 

SCHOLASTICISM   AND   MYSTICISM 

Our  last  lecture  dealt  with  the  mediaeval  period 
which  attained  its  highest  point  during  the  rule  of 
Innocent  III.  Our  review  of  it  showed  that  at  this 
period  the  Church  became  organized  uniformly  as  a 
Papal  hierarchy,  so  that  from  the  Roman  center 
the  whole  Western  world  might  be  governed.  Si- 
multaneously with  this  ecclesiastical  and  political 
organization  and  world-rulership,  the  teachers  of 
the  Church,  the  theologians,  sought  to  organize 
the  beHefs  of  Christianity  into  one  uniform  system, 
a  system  in  which  they  embraced  all  human  thought 
and  knowledge  so  that,  by  the  uniformity  of  Church 
dogma,  they  might  govern  the  entire  world-view 
of  Christianity.  This  was  a  process  parallel  to  the 
striving  of  the  Popes  for  Church  and  political  ruler- 
ship  over  the  kingdom  of  the  world.  This  task  of 
organizing  the  Christian  belief  into  a  uniform,  sys- 
tematic world-view  was  taken  up  by  the  teachers 
of  the  school  theology, —  the  Scholastics. 

They  did  not  seek  to  develop  the  individual  dog- 
mas, as  the  old  Church  had  formed  them ;  they  con- 
cerned themselves  with  the  formal  working  out  of 
the  traditional  doctrinal  material.     Their  object  was 

135 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

to  make  of  it  a  logical,  connected,  formal  doctrinal 
unit,  whereby  philosophic  dialectics  were  used  as 
an  instrument  in  order  to  make  the  thinkableness 
of  the  dogma  plausible  and  comprehensible.  No 
one  thought  of  such  a  thing  as  independent  criti- 
cism at  that  time.  The  truth  of  the  dogma  was 
simply  posited,  resting  on  divine  revelation,  and  all 
that  was  sought  was  to  make  this  supposedly  given, 
infallible  truth  plausible  to  the  understanding  by 
means  of  formal  dialectics.  That  this  task  was 
from  the  beginning  impossible  because  of  the  inner 
contradiction,  became  more  and  more  apparent  in 
the  course  of  the  development  of  Scholasticism. 

Three  phases  of  Scholasticism  may  be  differen- 
tiated. 

I.  During  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries,  it 
was  believed  that  the  dogma  could  be  known 
through  reason  and  the  attempt  was  made  to  prove 
it  by  reason. 

II.  In  the  second  phase,  the  thirteenth  century, 
there  was  more  prudence  and  modesty.  The  gen- 
eral basis,  the  natural  theology,  is  all  that  they  at- 
tempt to  prove  through  reason ;  no  longer  the  actual 
positive  dogmas  of  Trinity,  incarnation,  sacrament. 
With  regard  to  them,  they  are  merely  protected 
against  the  doubts  of  opposition:  the  possibility  and 
thinkableness,  not  the  necessity  of,  the  positive  dog- 
mas, are  to  be  proved. 

III.  In  the  third  phase,  the  reasonable  thinking 
of  the  dogma  is  entirely  given  up  and  its  incon- 

136 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

ceivability  is  declared  to  be  a  sign  of  its  origin 
in  divine  revelation  which  must  be  believed  on  the 
strength  of  authority. 

In  the  history  of  Scholasticism  itself,  there  was 
actually  completed  its  own  disintegration  and  dis- 
solution in  consequence  of  the  impossibility  of  that 
which  it  sought;  namely,  the  demonstration  of  the 
reasonableness  of  dogmas.  The  disintegration  of 
Scholastic  theology  occurred  in  the  last  centuries 
of  the  mediaeval  period  at  the  same  time  with  the 
Churchly  hierarchy  and  world-rulership. 

The  father  of  Scholasticism  was  Anselm,  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury.  He  became  famous  first  by 
reason  of  his  ontological  proof  of  the  existence  of 
God.  He  said  that  the  existence  of  God  could  be 
deduced  through  a  syllogism  out  of  the  concept 
of  God  as  the  most  perfect  being,  inasmuch  as  the 
concept  of  a  perfect  being  demands  that  this  being 
also  exist,  for  otherwise  existence  would  be  lacking 
to  his  perfection;  or,  again,  the  concept  of  a  being 
which  did  have  existence  would  be  more  perfect 
than  that  of  God.  Kant  characterized  this  proof 
as  a  school-joke,  for  existence  does  not  belong  to 
the  characteristics  of  a  concept. 

In  the  ontological  proof  of  God,  there  is  evi- 
dent a  naive  trust  in  the  power  of  formal  logic  of 
the  understanding,  in  the  capability  of  human  think- 
ing to  arrive  at  truth  by  deductions  and  conclu- 
sions out  of  general  concepts.  Anselm  became 
more  famous  through  his  second  book,  Cur  Deus 

137 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

homo?  in  which  he  attempted  to  prove  the  necessity 
of  the  incarnation  by  reason.  Ansehn  assumes  that 
human  sin  is  the  violation  of  the  honor  of  God, 
therefore  a  great  crime  against  the  majesty  of  God 
Himself,  which  necessarily  demands  either  punish- 
ment,—  even  to  the  extent  of  the  death  of  all  men, 
—  or  satisfaction.  This  satisfaction  must  cor- 
respond to  the  sublimity  of  the  object  injured, 
namely,  the  Divine  Majesty.  It  must,  therefore,  be 
an  infinite  quantity,  some  performance  of  infinite 
value.  Humanity  can  produce  no  performance  of 
infinite  value, 'since  it  performs  only  what  is  finite 
and  imperfect,  and,  moreover,  since  it  is  obligated 
to  perform  all  good  and,  therefore,  cannot  achieve 
any  excessive  merit.  Because  God  must  receive 
some  absolutely  valuable  gift  and,  because  of  its 
limitations  and  imperfections,  humanity  cannot  pos- 
sibly do  so,  therefore,  God  Himself,  as  the  Second 
Person  of  the  Deity,  had  to  become  man,  so  that 
by  his  infinitely  valuable  service,  as  a  man,  for  the 
rest  of  mankind,  he  offered  satisfaction  to  God  the 
Father.  This  satisfaction  does  not  yet  consist  in 
his  moral  activity,  to  which  he,  as  all  others,  is 
obliged,  but  in  his  voluntary,  innocent  passion  and 
death,  to  which  he,  as  the  Holy  One,  was  not  ob- 
ligated. There  was  no  guilt  for  which  he  had  to 
do  penance;  hence  his  death  was  a  voluntary  per- 
formance and  gift  to  God,  a  gift  of  infinite  worth; 
it  was  the  life  of  the  God-man  Himself  which  he 
offered.     The  Father  could  not  accept  His  infinitely 

138 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

valuable  gift  without  reward.  But  the  Son,  being 
a  God  Himself,  needed  no  reward,  and  therefore 
God  divided  the  reward  among  the  relatives  of  the 
God-man.  Those  relatives,  sinful  men,  were  unable 
to  pay,  and  for  his  sake  He  pardons  their  guilt 
and  withholds  the  punishment  deserved. 

This  teaching  is  important  not  only  because  it 
was  the  basis  of  Luther's  teaching  of  atonement 
and  the  Protestant  dogma  which  holds  to-day,  but 
also  from  a  Churchly  and  historical  point  of  view, 
because  it  is  the  true  mirrored  picture  of  the  whole 
Church  and  temporal  world-view  of  the  middle  age. 
In  each  feature,  this  can  be  followed  and  proved. 
Its  presupposition  that  the  sin  of  man  is  an  injury 
to  the  majesty  of  God  which  God  may  not  forgive 
without  demanding  satisfaction,  this  presupposition 
corresponds  exactly  with  the  conception  of  honor 
and  the  ethics  of  mediaeval  knighthood.  The  death 
of  the  God-man  as  a  voluntary  performance,  as 
guiltless  suffering,  as  a  gift  of  infinite  value  to 
God,  corresponds  to  the  ascetic,  mediaeval  view  that 
suffering  is  in  itself  an  object,  is  in  itself  good  and 
pleasing  to  God.  The  higher  the  rank  of  the  suf- 
ferer, the  higher  is  the  value  of  his  suffering,  and 
so  the  most  valuable  suffering  of  all  is  that  of  the 
God-man.  Again,  that  the  rewards  of  the  God-man 
are  transferable  to  others,  that  they  are  valid  for 
us  and  are  accounted  to  us  —  that  corresponds  to 
the  Church  teaching  of  the  rewards  of  the  saints, 
who  may  do  penance,  suffer,  and  die  one  for  the 

139 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

other;  while  on  the  other  hand,  it  corresponds  also 
to  the  criminal  law  of  the  middle  age,  according  to 
which  criminal  action  may  be  bought  off  by  blood- 
money.  The  amount  of  this  money  is  taxed  ac- 
cording to  the  value  of  the  injured  object.  The 
murder  of  a  free  man,  for  example,  can  only  be 
atoned  for  by  a  higher  sum  than  the  murder  of  a 
slave.  This  mediaeval  legal  theory,  which  was  not 
done  away  with  until  the  time  of  Charles  V,  con- 
trolled the  satisfaction  theory  of  the  Church  dogma. 

Constructed  on  the  presuppositions  of  its  time, 
this  satisfaction  theory  of  Anselm  corresponds  to  the 
mediaeval  mode  of  thinking  so  exactly  that  it  may 
be  conceived  easily  that  it  was  generally  accepted, 
if  not  without  conditions,  by  the  Church.  One 
thing  alone  is  difficult  to  concede,  that  this  teach- 
ing, originating  entirely  in  mediaeval  presupposi- 
tions and  conditions,  remained  a  permanent  criterion 
in  the  Church,  even  in  the  era  of  Protestantism, 
which  gave  up  all  of  those  presuppositions  of  ec- 
clesiastical and  temporal  nature.  For  the  Protes- 
tant Church,  Anselm's  theory  is  a  remarkable  an- 
achronism which,  from  the  Protestant  standpoint, 
is  just  as  little  to  be  understood  as  it  is  natural  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  middle  ages. 

A  freer  and  bolder  spirit  was  Peter  Abelard,  the 
learned  teacher  at  the  Dome  School  in  Paris.  True, 
his  purpose  was  not  an  opposition  to,  but  an  ex- 
planation and  basing  of  the  Church  dogmas.  But 
in  his  dialectic  method,  which  seemed  to  play  with 

140 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

the  sacred  material,  he  hit  upon  new  ways  of  recon- 
ciling the  contradictions  which  he  found  in  the  dog- 
mas. There  lived  in  him  an  instinct  of  indepen- 
dent, reasoning  thought  which  so  differed  from  the 
authoritative  belief  of  the  Church  that  the  con- 
tradiction was  difficult  to  hide.  Characteristic  is 
his  reverence  of  the  heathen  philosophers,  of  whom 
he  judged  that  the  divine  wisdom  of  creation  and 
the  value  of  the  morally  good  had  been  more  purely 
known  by  them  than  in  the  Jews'  petrified  worship 
of  the  letter.  His  first  book  was  a  dialogue  be- 
tween a  Jew,  a  heathen  philosopher,  and  a  Christian 
—  a  prelude  to  Lessing's  Nathan.  In  this  case,  de- 
cision was  not  had  through  recourse  to  authorities, 
but  through  the  reason  in  the  matter  itself.  Al- 
though Christ  remains  the  victor,  his  Christianity 
is  very  strongly  rationalistically  re-formed.  The 
notions  of  heaven  and  hell  are  simply  given  up  as 
a  popular  religion  and  are  spiritually  changed  into 
moral  concepts  of  good  and  evil.  Equally  as  com- 
promising as  this  dialogue,  for  orthodoxy,  was  his 
book  entitled  Sic  et  non,  wherein  the  contradictions 
of  the  Church  authorities  in  their  answers  to  ques- 
tions of  belief  and  life  are  arranged  in  such  fashion 
that  one  authority  controverts  the  other;  by  con- 
tradictory sentences  taken  from  the  Church  Fath- 
ers and  Scholastics  and  placed  in  parallel  columns, 
they  mutually  nulHfy  one  another.  The  outbreak 
of  conflict  with  Cliurch  authority  gave  rise  to  Ab- 
elard's    Tractate    concerning    the    divine    Trinity. 

141 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Abelard  seeks  to  interpret  this  mysterious  dogma 
in  terms  of  reason,  inasmuch  as  it  is  possible  neither 
to  believe  nor  to  preach  when  one  does  not  under- 
stand. He  interprets  the  three  persons  as  names 
for  the  attributes  which  belong  to  the  Divine  Be- 
ing; power,  wisdom,  and  goodness,  a  differentiation 
which  he  expressly  showed  was  to  be  found  as  early 
as  Plato  and  the  heathen  Sibyl  —  one  which  had 
only  been  more  clearly  and  decisively  expressed  by 
Christ.  Such  a  rationalization  is  very  simple  and 
appealing,  but  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  outcome 
is  quite  different  from  Church  doctrine.  Abelard's 
doctrine  was  condemned  by  the  Synod  at  Soissons, 
and  the  author  confined  to  the  monastery.  He  soon 
escaped  and,  in  the  Oratory  of  the  Holy  Paraclete, 
gathered  about  himself  a  great  host  of  students, 
so  that  in  the  course  of  time  he  was  able  to  resume 
his  activities  at  the  Dome  School.  His  enemies 
found  no  peace,  however,  until  he  had  been  con- 
demned anew  and  excommunicated  by  the  Synod 
at  Sens  —  excommunicated  and  condemned  to  life- 
imprisonment.  He  appealed  to  the  Pope  and  at 
the  same  time  fled  to  Cluny,  where,  two  years  later, 
he  ended  his  active  and  much  tried  existence. 

The  Abbot  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  had  been  his 
main  opponent ;  Abelard's  reasoned  dialectic,  he  op- 
posed with  the  mysticism  of  the  heart,  with  that 
same  one-sided  passion  which,  at  the  close  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  romanticism  employed  against 
rationalism.     Hausrath   has   given   a   fine   charac- 

142 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

tcrization  of  Bernard.  He  calls  him  the  accurate 
type  of  Roman  saint,  soft  by  nature,  but  obsessed 
with  the  Old  Testament  zealous  spirit.  As  a  youth 
he  had  been  a  kind  of  troubadour,  a  singer  of  love- 
songs,  then  a  penitent  and  reformer,  a  monk-prince, 
a  spirited  author,  a  powerful  orator,  and  the  great- 
est actor  of  his  day;  but  with  all  his  gifts  he 
served  no  other  master  than  the  hierarchical  idea 
of  subjecting  the  world  to  monastlcism,  and  of  fill- 
ing it  with  monasteries,  and  the  monasteries  with 
penitents.  He  was  thoroughly  In  earnest  in  his 
denial  of  the  world,  yet  he  sought  ever  rulership 
over  it.  He  desired  the  kingdom  of  peace,  but  by 
reason  of  his  goading  toward  pilgrimages  to  Rome 
and  crusades,  there  is  more  blood  on  his  conscience 
than  on  that  of  any  other  man  of  the  century. 
He  began  with  a  reformation  of  monastic  life,  and 
his  order  became  more  luxurious  than  any  other; 
he  was  a  visionary,  a  wonder-worker  of  naive  credi- 
bility, and  yet  a  wise  statesman  with  a  view  as  broad 
as  the  horizon  which  could  possibly  open  up  to  the 
head  of  such  a  far-reaching  order.  He  longed  for 
the  solitude  of  a  cell,  and  yet  he  played  a  hand  In  all 
the  activities  of  the  Church  and  of  world-politics, — 
in  short  he  was  a  real  representative  of  a  system 
which,  under  the  semblance  of  despising  the  world, 
aimed  to  rule  it  —  the  real  prototype  of  the  Ultra- 
Montanists  who  always  carry  religion  In  their 
mouths,  through  their  dubious  ways,  and  at  the 
same  time  strive  for  the  supremacy  of  their  party. 

143 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

The  theologians,  Hugo  and  Richard,  of  the  Pa- 
risian Monastery  of  Saint  Victor,  were  milder  than 
the  monk  Bernard.  They  occupied  a  sort  of  middle 
position  between  the  Scholastics  and  the  Mystics. 
They  distinguished  three  steps  of  piety:  the  first 
is  a  simple  beHef,  on  the  basis  of  authority;  above 
that,  is  the  belief  which  is  conscious  of  its  rea- 
sons through  reasoned  convictions;  and  lastly,  the 
highest  step  is  the  seeing  of  God,  the  mystical  vision 
of  the  divine  truth  which  is  grasped  by  the  pure 
heart  in  unmediated  emotion.  John  of  Salisbury, 
the  friend  of  Thomas  ä  Becket,  also  reproached 
Scholasticism  on  account  of  its  one-sided,  reasoned 
dialectics  which  lost  themselves  in  formal  concepts, 
and  against  it  he  set  up  practical  directions  for  the 
life  of  society. 

The  evil  consequences  which  Abelard  brought 
upon  himself  by  his  Icarus  flight  of  bold  dialectics 
caused  the  Scholastics  who  followed  him  to  be  more 
careful;  they  kept  closer  to  the  traditional  material 
in  the  dogmas  of  belief.  First,  Peter  of  Lombardy 
gathered  all  the  material  of  Church  dogma  into  his 
four  volumes  of  "  Sentences  " —  a  systematically 
ordered  collection  of  dogmatic  statements  of  the 
Church  fathers  concerning  Church,  world  and  man, 
God-man,  sacraments,  and  the  perfection  of  the 
Church.  It  might  be  called  the  first  systematic 
Christian  dogmatics.  These  volumes  became  the 
text-book  for  the  later  work  of  the  Scholastics. 
That  work  consisted  in  transforming  the  material 

144 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

thus  gathered  into  a  logical  and  connected  whole, 
and  for  that  purpose  the  AristoteHan  philosophy, 
which  had  been  learned  through  the  mediation  of 
the  Arabic  philosophy,  was  employed  as  a  formal 
means  of  assistance.  Up  to  that  time,  Aristotle  had 
been  entirely  unknown  to  the  Christian  world,  at 
the  close  of  the  twelfth  century  they  made  his  ac- 
quaintance, and  in  the  thirteenth,  he  became  the 
greatest  luminary  in  the  heavens  of  authority,  the 
ruler  of  thought,  and,  as  Dante  called  him,  "  the 
master  of  those  who  know."  He  became  the  indis- 
putable authority  concerning  worldly  wisdom,  just 
as  the  dogma  had  become  the  indisputable  authority 
concerning  divine  wisdom.  Under  this  double  yoke 
the  Scholastics  worked.  The  task  of  welding  this 
double  tradition  into  one  uniform  whole  was  the 
impossible  labor  through  which  Scholasticism  neces- 
sarily brought  about  its  own  disintegration. 

Albertus  Magnus  was  the  ^'  polyhistor"  of  his 
time.  He  gathered  up  all  the  knowledge  then 
known  and  worked  it  into  his  Scholastic  theology, 
into  his  dogmatic  system.  Out  of  his  school  came 
Thomas  Aquinas,  the  Doctor  Angelicus,  as  his  mar- 
veling contemporaries  named  him.  In  the  Siunma 
Theologiae,  Thomas  united  Church  tradition,  Neo- 
platonic  mysticism  and  Aristotelian  dialectics  into 
one  system ;  not  only  the  mediaeval  Church,  but  also 
the  Catholic  Church  of  to-day,  has  thought  that  sys- 
tem to  be  the  essence  of  all  truth.  In  fact,  the 
Summa  of  Thomas  is  the  most  faithful  expression 

145 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  mediaeval  world-view  as  it  emerged  out  o£ 
the  mixture  of  mediaeval  philosophy  and  Church 
dogma.  The  architecture  of  that  construction  was 
mixed,  and  its  materials  of  two  entirely  different 
natures  —  super-reasonable  dogmas  of  faith  built 
on  a  foundation  of  philosophic  knowledge.  Ac- 
cording to  Thomas,  although  reason  cannot  prove 
the  positive  truths  of  faith,  as  Anselm  and  Abelard 
thought  they  could,  yet  reason  cannot  controvert 
them.  Inasmuch  as  reason  can  only  acknowledge 
its  own  hmitations  with  regard  to  positive  knowl- 
edge, she  herself  demands  her  own  completion  by 
revelation,  for  she  can  arrive  only  through  super- 
natural revelation  at  her  absolute  goal  which  con- 
sists in  the  supernatural  condition  of  transcenden- 
tal bliss  in  the  vision  of  God. 

Thomas  is  in  accord  with  Aristotle  when  he  desig- 
nates the  nature  of  God  as  purest  activity,  actus 
purus.  He  is  absolute  simplicity  in  itself  and  is 
comprehended  by  our  understanding  only  through 
various  concepts.  Thomas,  too,  teaches  as  Augus- 
tine taught,  that  the  Three  Persons  of  the  Trinity 
are  to  be  conceived  as  relations  of  divine  thought 
and  volition.  Since,  according  to  Thomas,  the  di- 
vine activity  is  thinking  which  has  itself  for  an  ob- 
ject, noesis  noeseos,  the  Son  is  the  self-created  object 
and  image  of  the  divine  thinking,  and  the  Spirit 
of  His  willing.  But,  you  ask,  how  can  three  persons 
come  out  of  this?  Well,  Thomas  does  not  know, 
himself.     The  theological  thought  made  a  strong  at- 

146 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

tack  in  its  attempt  at  a  reasoning  knowledge  of 
dogma,  but  it  was  repulsed  by  the  rigid  incompre- 
hensibility and  super-reasonableness  of  dogma. 
With  all  the  dogmas  of  the  system  of  this  other- 
wise keen  thinker,  the  same  thing  is  repeated;  this 
is  especially  true  of  the  doctrine  of  the  creation  and 
government  of  the  world.  He  concedes,  as  Aris- 
totle did,  that  for  reason,  it  would  be  the  most  nat- 
ural supposition  that  the  world  had  no  beginning  in 
time,  but  was  eternal  like  God,  as  though  it  were 
the  divided  phenomenon  of  a  one,  undivided  divine 
nature.  For  reason  that  would  be  the  more  prob- 
able, but  Thomas  thinks  it  necessary,  on  the  basis 
of  revelation,  to  believe  in  a  beginning  of  creation 
in  time.  Again,  it  is  reasonable  to  think  of  Divine 
Providence  as  the  dependence  of  all  finite  causes 
upon  an  all-deciding  general  or  first  cause,  on  God, 
Whose  activity  reveals  itself  in  the  connection  of 
all  finite  causes  among  themselves.  However,  now 
and  again,  Thomas  sees  fit  to  nullify  this  order  and 
accepts  an  immediate  activity  of  the  first  cause  in 
miracles. 

In  accord  with  Augustine,  Thomas  teaches  that 
man  lost  his  original  righteousness  through  the  Fall, 
but  thereby  he  lost  only  a  supernatural  addition  to 
his  nature ;  his  own  nature  was  not  spoiled.  At  the 
same  time,  however,  the  original  righteousness  was 
held  to  be  the  actual  nature  of  man.  Salvation  is 
completed  through  the  merit  of  the  innocent  suf- 
fering of  Christ  which,   although  in  itself  a  per- 

147 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

formance  of  infinite  superabundant  value,  neverthe- 
less was  to  be  continued  and  completed  by  the  meri- 
torious performances  of  Christians  themselves.  The 
power  to  achieve  the  good  is  bestowed  upon  men 
through  the  sacraments,  the  mediums  of  divine 
grace.  Through  them  he  becomes  capable  of  the 
performance  of  good  works  which  God  then  con- 
siders man's  own  actual  merit.  The  sacraments  are 
means  and  bearers  of  a  supernatural  power;  the 
purpose  of  the  seven  is  to  sanctify  the  whole  of  hu- 
man life,  from  birth  to  death,  in  all  man's  social 
relations.  In  the  mass,  there  is  a  real  change  of  the 
elements  and  at  the  same  time  a  real  repetition  of 
the  sacrifice  of  Christ  by  the  celebrant  priest.  In 
the  penitential  sacrament,  the  Church  practises  her 
right  of  imposing  temporal  punishments  according 
to  her  will,  and  of  remitting  punishments,  even  those 
of  the  world  beyond  under  certain  conditions,  on  the 
ground  of  her  possession  of  the  treasure  of  grace  — 
that  is,  the  heaped  up  merits  of  the  saints  which  she 
distributes  to  each  one  according  to  his  worth, 
so  that  he  is  relieved  thus  of  temporal  or  super- 
mundane penalties.  This  dogmatic  system  rises  to 
the  hierarchical  power  of  the  Church  over  the  ter- 
restrial and  celestial  welfare  of  humankind.  It  is 
remarkable  that  a  system  which  is  based  on  Aris- 
totle, the  heathen  philosopher,  and  his  natural  rea- 
son, should  find  its  apex  in  the  absolutely  supernat- 
ural, the  priestly  power  over  things  here  and  be- 
yond.    Here  you  have  the  whole  mediaeval  period 

148 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

with  its  crass  contradictions  of  the  natural,  the  su- 
pernatural, and  the  unnatural! 

As  an  opponent  to  Thomas,  the  theological  mas- 
ter of  the  Dominican  monks,  there  appeared  Duns 
Scotus,  actually  the  Scotchman  John  of  Duns,  a 
keen  theologian  of  the  Franciscans.  He  was  as 
celebrated  a  critic  as  Thomas  was  a  systematizer. 
By  his  critical  analyses  of  the  theses  of  his  pred- 
ecessor, he  prepares  the  dissolution  of  the  whole 
Scholastic  theology,  that  was  involved  in  the  funda- 
mental thought  of  the  Scotistic  theology.  As 
Thomas  had  been  a  determinist,  so  Duns  Scotus  was 
an  indeterminist ;  or,  in  other  words,  as  Thomas 
subordinates  volition  to  knowledge,  so  Duns  subor- 
dinates knowledge  to  volition.  Using  modern  terms 
we  should  say,  the  one  was  an  intellectualist  and 
the  other  a  voluntarist.  The  freedom  of  God  and 
of  man  was  the  leading  viewpoint  of  Duns's  theol- 
ogy. His  idea  was  that  God  did  not  need  to  con- 
sider anything  meritorious  because  of  any  inner 
necessity  of  value.  It  is  meritorious  only  because 
God  wills  it  so.  Hence,  one  might  no  longer  speak 
of  the  necessity  of  salvation  through  Christ,  but 
one  may  only  believe  on  the  basis  of  positive  rev- 
elation that  it  had  been  God's  will  to  accept  the 
deed  of  Christ  as  an  infinitely  valuable  one,  just 
as  God  suffers  the  imperfect  deeds  of  men  to  be 
considered  meritorious  as  a  matter  of  his  own  will, 
and  this  we  are  to  believe  on  the  ground  of  the 
authority  of  the  Church.     But  it  could  n't  be  proved. 

149 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Altogether,  the  doctrines  of  belief  withdraw  from 
reasonable  thinking  and  are  exclusively  the  matter 
of  positive  belief  which  is  the  more  meritorious  the 
more  it  opposes  reason,  hence  bringing  the  sac- 
rifice of  the  intellect. 

From  this  point,  it  was  not  far  to  the  main- 
tenance of  the  double  truth  which  is  the  counter- 
part of  the  double  morahty,  which  we  have  spoken 
of  before.  The  doctrine  of  the  double  truth  is  this : 
First,  there  is  the  natural  truth,  knowable  through 
reason,  for  the  philosophers;  second,  the  supernat- 
ural truth  revealed  by  God,  naturally  not  to  be 
known  by  us  but  to  be  believed  on  the  basis  of 
authority.  These  two  truths  stand  alongside, 
though  opposed  to,  one  another,  and  yet  both  are 
held  to  be  equally  true.  That  is  asking  reason 
more  than  she  can  bear.  Just  as  truly  as  there  are 
not  two  reasons  but  only  one,  so  truly  can  there 
be  but  one  truth.  In  the  doctrine  of  the  double 
truth,  there  is  revealed  that  deep  difference  which 
continues  throughout  the  entire  course  of  thinking 
of  the  later  Scholastics.  Under  the  mask  of  an 
obedient  belief  in  authority,  such  as  Duns  Scotus 
demands,  the  sceptic  imp  is  hidden.  And  in  ques- 
tions such  as  those  set  up  by  later  Scholasticism  and 
seriously  debated  —  for  example,  whether  God 
might  have  taken  on  not  only  the  human  nature  but 
that  of  a  donkey  or  a  stone  —  in  such  questions 
Scholasticism  clearly  mocks  itself  and  declares  its 
own  bankruptcy. 

150 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

Out  of  this  wreck  of  Scholastic  thinking,  mys- 
ticism saved  Christianity  in  the  sanctuary  of  the 
heart.  Beyond  the  rigid  concepts  of  the  under- 
standing and  the  conclusions  of  logic,  which  were  to 
bridge  over  the  chasm  between  the  finite  and  the 
infinite  and  yet  never  could,  mysticism  turned  to  the 
immediate  emotion  or  feeling  of  the  oneness  of  the 
soul  with  God.  At  one  time  this  mysticism  allied 
itself  to  the  speculative  thinking  of  Plato  and  thus 
prepared  a  new  theology  arising  from  religious  ex- 
perience and  leading  to  freer  speculation ;  at  another 
time  it  confined  itself  to  practical  wisdom  evidenced 
by  purity  of  heart  and  life. 

First  of  all,  we  must  speak  of  the  great  master  of 
speculative  mysticism,  Meister  Eckhart  of  Stras- 
burg; his  sermons  and  his  writings  started  a  great 
movement  of  the  spirits  of  the  times,  especially 
in  the  Rhine  country.  He  was  well  acquainted  with 
Holy  Writ,  with  the  Church  fathers  and  Scholastics, 
especially  with  Augustine  and  Thomas,  but  he  did 
not  care  about  basing  Church  doctrine,  he  wanted  to 
show  the  way  of  the  soul  toward  God.  For  his 
deep  religious  speculation,  he  created  his  own  lan- 
guage. His  sermons  in  the  Allemannian  tongue 
carry  one  away  with  their  power  and  convincing 
quality.  The  Church  had  made  the  thought  of  God- 
manhood  an  inconceivable,  supermundane  mystery. 
Eckhart  made  it  the  central  point  of  religious  ex- 
perience and  the  source  of  religious  speculation. 
God's  real  nature  is  such  that  he  does  not  stay  for 

151 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Himself  alone,  beyond,  but  that  He  reveals  Him- 
self as  the  life  of  the  whole  world  and  of  all  men. 
Without  creatures  God  were  not  God.  He  can  do 
as  little  without  us  as  without  Himself.  What 
creatures  are  in  truth,  that  they  are  in  God,  through 
the  existence  which  God  Himself  has  imparted  to 
them.  It  is  the  goodness  of  God  that  He  imparts 
Himself  to  all,  but  only  in  the  human  soul  is  God 
present  in  Godlike  fashion.  The  soul  is,  therefore, 
God's  resting-place  in  which  the  temporal  and  the 
eternal  are  allied.  Our  spirit  is  the  divine  spark 
within  us,  wherein  is  completed  the  alliance  of  God 
and  the  soul.  As  God  contains  all  things  in  Him- 
self, so  it  is  in  our  soul;  the  soul  is  the  micro-cosmos 
in  which  all  things  are  contained  and  are  led  back 
to  God.  Therefore,  there  is  no  difference  between 
the  Son  of  God  and  the  soul.  Humanity  itself  is 
the  one  Son  whom  the  Father  eternally  bore,  but 
the  individual  man  is  only  a  limited  phenomenon 
of  all  human  being.  li  I  put  aside  the  limitations  of 
self,  which  separate  me  from  others,  and  return 
to  the  simplicity  of  my  spiritual  being,  then  all  that 
remains  is  the  pure  nature  of  the  soul  which  is 
so  one  with  the  nature  of  God  that  the  soul  might 
almost  be  called  God  itself  and  the  creator  of  all 
things.  Whatever  separates  us  from  God  is  but 
the  deceptive  semblance  of  self  which  chains  our 
volition.  Hence,  man  must  release  himself  from 
the  fetters  of  self  and  creature  love,  must  have  noth- 
ing and  desire  nothing  excepting  God,  and  expe- 

152 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

rience  God  in  the  solitude  of  his  spirit.  *'  Shall  I 
make  God  with  thee?  Then  must  thou  first  be- 
come as  nothing,  must  give  up  all  thy  willing  and 
thinking  and  offer  up  thy  soul  pure  to  God,  must 
not  will  anything  excepting  what  He  wills;  then 
hast  thou  no  need  to  care  for  righteousness,  but 
let  God  be  active  in  thee,  and  then  in  thy  love  of 
God  art  thou  certain  of  thy  bliss  which  can  never 
again  be  destroyed  by  the  evils  of  the  age.  Ever 
and  ever  therein  goes  on  the  incarnation  of  God 
as  in  Christ,  for  the  Father  did  not  bear  the  Son 
only  in  eternity,  but  ever  and  ever  does  He  give 
birth  to  Him  in  the  soul  of  him  who  offers  himself 
to  Him,  and  what  the  Son  has  taught  us  in  Christ 
is  merely  this,  that  we  are  the  selfsame  sons  of 
God." — By  these  thoughts,  so  far  ahead  of  their 
time,  the  Meister  of  Strasburg  stretches  his  hand 
across  five  centuries  toward  the  classical  German 
thinkers  of  modern  times. 

His  successors  in  South  Germany  and  in  the 
Netherlands  —  Tauler  and  Suso,  Ruysbroek  and 
Thomas  ä  Kempis  —  put  aside  his  speculative 
thoughts  to  a  great  extent  and  confined  themselves 
mainly  to  the  ethical  content  of  his  mysticism,  and 
continued  this  mainly  along  its  ascetic  world-deny- 
ing side.  Only  the  unknown  author  of  the  "  Ger- 
man Theology "  (we  know  merely  that  he  be- 
longed to  the  "  Deutschherren  "  of  Frank fort-on- 
the-Main,  in  the  fourteenth  century)  is  another  such 
genius    as    Eckhart.     In    him    are    well    balanced 

153 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

throughout  the  deep  knowledge  of  the  nature  of 
things  and  practical  ethics.  The  author  says  with 
Eckhart:  ''God  is  the  Being  of  all  being,  the 
Life  of  all  living,  the  Knowledge  of  all  knowing, 
all  things  have  their  nature  truer  in  God  than  in 
themseh^es,  and  this  is  true  of  their  powers,  their 
knowledge,  their  life,  and  everything  else;  other- 
wise God  were  not  everything  good.  So  all  is  good, 
and  God  will  have  it  so,  and  so  it  is  not  contrary 
to  Him.  Only  one  thing  is  contrary  to  Him,  sin, 
and  this  is  nothing  else  than  that  the  creature  wills 
other  than  God's  will."  With  great  emphasis,  the 
author  turns  against  "  the  free  spirits "  who  de- 
duced from  the  mystic  unity  of  God  a  moral  in- 
differentism  and  egoistic  superhumanity.  He  asks : 
"  What  then  is  a  man  who  is  completely  God  or 
GodHke?  This  be  the  answer:  He  who  is  illum- 
inated throughout  and  glows  with  the  divine  light, 
who  is  inflamed  and  burns  with  the  divine  love. 
Light  or  knowledge  is  nothing  and  has  no  value 
without  love.  Though  one  may  make  many  no- 
tions of  God  and  His  attributes  for  himself  and 
think  that  he  knows  exactly  what  God  is:  if  he  have 
not  love  he  will  neither  be  completely  God  nor  God- 
like. H  there  is  to  be  real  love  there,  then  the  man 
must  hold  fast  to  God  and  give  up  all  that  is  not  of 
God  or  that  is  against  God.  Such  love  unites  man 
with  God  so  that  he  never  can  be  separated  from 
Him.     Where,  however,  there  is  the  true  light  and 

154 


Scholasticism  and  Mysticism 

the  true  love,  there  too  is  Christ,  for  in  truth  they 
are  both  one." 

Our  time  is  too  short  for  a  more  detailed  study 
of  this  profound  writing  which,  as  you  know,  was 
so  highly  thought  of  by  Luther  that  he  published  it 
twice  with  a  preface.  Most  recently  it  has  been 
published  under  the  title,  Das  Büchlein  vom  voll- 
kommenen Leben,  Eine  deutsche  Theologie  in  the 
original  text,  critically  edited,  with  a  capital  intro- 
duction by  Herrn.  Buettner.  I  advise  you  to  get 
this  little  book.     I  am  sure  it  will  captivate  you. 


iSS 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   PASSING   OF   THE    MIDDLE   AGES 

A  BRIEF  review  of  the  closing  period  of  the  mid- 
dle ages,  the  three  centuries  from  Innocent  III  to 
the  Reformation  are  to  occupy  us  to-day.  These  are 
the  main  points  to  be  kept  in  mind :  First,  the  dis- 
integration of  the  papal  hierarchy;  Second,  the  rise 
of  the  new  supports  and  instruments  of  the  Church, 
the  mendicant  monastic  orders  of  Franciscans  and 
Dominicans;  Third,  the  growing  opposition  to  the 
Church  system  in  the  consciousness  of  the  laity  and 
of  some  of  the  theologians ;  Fourth,  the  increase  of 
strength  in  the  new  worldly  ideal  of  culture.  This 
last  point  we  will  take  up  next  time  and  we  will 
begin  to-day  with  the  disintegration  of  the  papal 
hierarchy. 

After  the  death  of  Innocent  III,  the  struggle  be- 
tween Pope  and  Emperor  was  renewed  with  great- 
est passion  on  both  sides.  Gregory  IX  attacked 
the  great  Stauffen  Emperor,  Frederick  II,  with  the 
spiritual  weapon  of  the  ban  and  with  the  temporal 
weapon  of  a  revolt  of  the  Northern  Italian  cities. 
Frederick,  however,  was  more  fortunate  than  his 
predecessors.  Italy  succumbed  to  his  superior  pow- 
er and  his  superior  culture  laughed  at  the  papal  ban. 

156 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

In  fact,  Frederick  was  far  ahead  of  his  century, 
both  in  scientific  enhghtenment  and  in  statesman- 
ship. Instead  of  fearing  the  papal  ban,  as  the  Em- 
peror before  him  had,  he  reversed  the  weapon.  In 
an  open  letter  to  the  princes,  he  made  the  heaviest 
accusations  against  the  Pope :  "  Ye  princes,  pity 
the  Church  for  her  head  is  weak,  her  prince  is  a 
bellowing  lion,  in  her  midst  sits  a  disloyal  man,  a 
smirched  priest,  a  scatter-brained  prophet.  Truly 
this  misfortune  comes  closest  to  us  and  we  feel  most 
keenly  the  consequences  of  papal  misdeeds,  but  in 
the  end  our  disgrace  is  also  yours,  and  your  sub- 
jugation seems  an  easy  thing  when  once  the  Ro- 
man Emperor  is  subdued.  We  are  not  writing  this 
as  though  the  power  to  turn  away  this  misfortune 
were  lacking,  but  that  the  whole  world  may  see  that 
the  honor  of  all  temporal  princes  is  attacked  when 
one  of  them  has  been  insulted." 

In  a  second  letter  to  the  Christian  world,  apos- 
tolic poverty  is  contrasted  with  the  insatiable  greed 
of  the  Pope,  and  thus  the  hierarchical  system  was 
struck  at  its  most  vulnerable  point,  a  point  which 
at  the  same  time  most  angered  the  laymen.  Fred- 
erick wrote  to  Henry  III  of  England  that  it  would 
be  a  work  of  love  to  take  their  possessions  from  the 
clerics  and  to  lead  them  back  to  the  apostolic  life 
and  the  humility  of  their  Master.  But  the  ac- 
complishment of  such  bold  plans  of  reformation  was 
not  to  be  thought  of  under  the  Stauffen  Emperor 
whose  power  was  split  by  the  Italian  rulership.     As 

157 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

long  as  he  lived  his  spirit  was  equal  to  all  the  papal 
intrigues,  and  after  his  death  misfortune  fell  upon 
his  house.  We  might  say  that  Italy  caused  the  im- 
perial house  of  Stauffen,  and  with  it  the  old  German 
imperial  power,  to  bleed  to  death.  However,  the 
victory  of  the  Popes  was  dearly  bought.  They 
called  in  the  French  to  aid  them  against  the  German 
Emperor,  and  the  consequence  was  that  they  fell 
under  the  authoritative  influence  of  the  French 
kings. 

At  the  close  of  the  thirteenth  century,  Boniface 
VIII  did  try  to  play  again  the  role  of  the  great 
Pope  Innocent  III.  The  result  showed  how  the 
times  had  changed.  When  Boniface  insulted  King 
Philip  of  France,  the  latter  sought  and  found  sup- 
port in  the  French  people;  he  called  a  parliament 
not  only  of  the  nobility  and  the  clerics  but  added 
the  third  estate,  the  citizens,  whose  national  self- 
consciousness  ranged  itself  on  the  side  of  the  King 
and  against  Rome.  This  parliament  immediately 
had  the  foreign  prelates  arrested  and  confiscated 
their  possessions.  Thereupon,  in  his  infamous  bull, 
Unam  Sanctam,  the  Pope  declared  that  all  human 
creatures  are  subject  to  the  Pope  under  the  pain  of 
loss  of  bliss.  King  PhiHp  had  him  who  proclaimed 
the  bull  arrested,  and  accused  the  Pope  of  heresy,  in 
the  assembly,  because  he  assumed  infalhbility,  thus 
leading  men  to  idolatry.  The  Pope's  reply  was  the 
interdiction  of  France  and  the  grant  of  rulership 
over  France,  as  a  fief,  to  the  German  King.     But 

IS8 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

that  didn't  help.  The  power  of  the  Roman  curses 
broke  against  the  united  opposition  of  the  French 
people  which  formed  a  bulwark  for  its  King  against 
the  Roman  Pope.  Therein  the  French  people  have 
always  been  exemplary  and  we  can  only  marvel  at 
them  and  envy  them !  Thus,  supported  by  his  peo- 
ple, Phihp  could  dare  to  take  the  Pope  prisoner  at 
Anagni  and  suffer  him  to  be  plundered  of  all  his 
treasure.  Although  he  was  soon  freed,  he  died 
of  a  broken  heart  shortly  after  his  return  to  Rome. 
His  defeat  marked  the  beginning  of  the  decline  of 
papal  temporal  power  against  which  there  had  risen 
the  national  spirit  of  the  nations.  The  French 
Pope,  Clement  V,  who  had  bought  his  election  by 
concessions  to  Philip  of  France,  was  the  first  to 
make  his  seat  the  little  town  of  Avignon  in  South 
France,  and  therewith,  in  1305,  he  began  the  sev- 
enty-two years  of  the  so-called  Babylonian  exile  of 
the  Papacy.  The  Popes  at  this  time  were  simply 
instruments  of  the  French  kings  and  it  was  but  nat- 
ural that  it  served  them  little  toward  gaining  respect 
among  the  other  nations. 

The  dispute  between  the  German  Emperor,  Lud- 
wig the  Bavarian,  and  the  French  Pope,  John  XXII, 
was  the  occasion  of  the  first  literary  polemics  con- 
cerning the  rights  of  State  and  Church  in  princi- 
ple. Augustinus  Triumphus,  the  papal  defender  in 
this  dispute,  wrote  that,  as  the  Pope  was  God's  dep- 
uty in  care  of  all  of  the  royal  realms  of  the  world, 
he  might  depose  all  kings  if  he  would;  for  all  kings 

159 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

are  his  officers.  Against  this,  MarsiHus  of  Padua, 
the  learned  friend  of  the  German  King,  wrote  a 
memorial,  Defensor  Pads  (The  Defender  of 
Peace),  wherein  he  defends  the  independence  of 
the  state  emphatically,  recommends  the  abrogation 
of  Church  territory,  and  of  all  temporal  force  in 
matters  of  faith,  and  rejects  the  validity  of  the 
papal  interdict.  He  goes  so  far  as  to  fall  back 
upon  Holy  Writ  as  the  sole  authority  and  makes 
his  appeal  to  a  general  council  of  the  faithful.  Mar- 
siHus is  the  first  to  make  use  of  historical  criticism 
as  a  weapon  against  the  hierarchy,  in  that  he  is  the 
first  one  to  doubt  the  legend  of  the  Bishop's  Office 
of  Peter  at  Rome  and  to  endeavor  to  demonstrate 
that  it  is  a  baseless  myth.  Besides  these  bold  the- 
oretical declarations  which  show  Marsilius  actually 
to  be  far  ahead  of  his  time,  the  conflict  between  the 
German  Emperor  Ludwig  and  the  Pope  had  this 
practical  consequence;  at  the  meeting  of  the 
Kurfürsts  at  Reuse  they  declared  that  the  election 
of  a  German  King  was  dependent  entirely  upon 
their  choice  and  independent  of  every  papal  inter- 
ference. Thus,  also  among  the  German  princes,  the 
vaunt  of  the  foreigner  finally  wakened  the  feeling 
of  national  independence.  It  is  a  pity  that  Ludwig 
did  not  take  the  decided  stand  and  fall  back  upon 
this  national  feeHng,  as  the  French  King  had  done. 
Soon  after  the  return  of  Pope  Gregory  XI  to 
Rome,  the  schism  between  the  Italian  Pope,  Urban 
VI,  and  the  French  Pope,  Clement  VII,  began  and 

l6o 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

they  mutually  excommunicated  one  another.  The 
bishops  and  the  monastic  orders  took  sides, —  in 
short,  the  consequence  was  a  helpless  confusion  of 
the  entire  Church.  In  order  to  overcome  these  evils, 
the  University  of  Paris  demanded  a  general  Coun- 
cil v^hich  was  to  take  up  the  reform  of  Church 
disorders  in  general.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  this 
Council  was  called  to  meet  at  Pisa.  It  was  without 
result ;  for,  while  the  two  unworthy  Popes  were  de- 
posed, their  place  was  filled  by  John  XXIII,  a  one- 
time sea  pirate  and  notorious  criminal.  At  the  next 
Council,  of  Constance,  in  141 5,  he,  too,  was  de- 
posed, Martin  V  was  chosen  as  his  successor  —  a 
shrewd  diplomat  who  understood  how  to  render  all 
the  reform  measures  of  the  Council  nugatory  by 
making  separate  treaties  with  the  individual  nations, 
and  who  made  it  heretical  to  appeal  from  or  against 
the  Pope  at  any  Council.  Against  this  the  reform 
party,  powerfully  represented  by  the  French  Chan- 
cellor, Gerson,  maintained  that  a  general  Council 
was  superior  to  the  Pope  and  based  this  on  the 
authority  of  Christ.  The  efforts  of  Gerson  and  his 
followers  brought  about  the  third  reform  Coun- 
cil, at  Basle.  The  session  lasted  from  1431  to 
1449,  but  it  achieved  equally  little.  Its  reform 
decrees,  intended  to  bring  about  the  independence 
of  national  Churches  and  the  limitation  of  the  papal 
power,  failed  because  the  Italian  papal  party  pro- 
tested ;  because  the  German  princes  were  weak,  and 
because  the   royal   minister   ^neas   Sylvius,    who 

161 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

later  ascended  the  papal  throne  as  Pius  II,  was  too 
crafty.  At  first  he  belonged  to  the  reform  party, 
but,  cleverly  noting  how  things  were  going,  he  went 
over  to  the  papal  party,  and  then  he  knew  how  to 
talk  over  the  weak  Emperor,  Frederick  III,  so  that 
all  the  accomplishments  of  the  reform  councils  were 
given  up  by  the  Concordat  of  Aschaffenburg. 
Again  the  French  were  wiser.  They  knew  how  to 
use  the  opportunity  of  the  moment  in  the  Sanction 
of  Bourges,  wherein  the  Basle  decrees  were  made 
the  basis  of  the  independence  of  the  Gallic  Church. 
The  pitiable  weakness  of  the  attempts  at  reform  of 
the  Councils  had  demonstrated  that  a  reform  of  the 
Church  from  above,  from  Emperor  and  Pope,  was 
impossible.  It  showed  that  any  real  renewal  of  the 
Church  had  to  come  from  below,  from  the  people 
themselves,  from  the  individual  consciences  of 
Christians. 

The  last  Popes  of  the  close  of  the  middle  ages 
were  merely  temporal  princes,  generals,  and  art 
Maecenases ;  as  to  the  rest,  they  were  actually  heath- 
en in  attitude  and  action.  Innocent  VIII  was 
called  the  father  of  Rome  on  account  of  his  numer- 
ous illegitimate  children.  His  infamous  Witches 
Bull  was  made  the  basis  of  gruesome  persecution 
of  witches,  bringing  unspeakable  misery  upon  Chris- 
tendom for  centuries.  Alexander  VI  and  Caesar 
Borgia,  his  son,  were  virtuosos  in  vice,  without 
shame  and  without  conscience.  Julius  II  was  a 
bold  warrior,  a  sharp  statesman,  a  Maecenas  of  art, 

162 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

anything  but  a  cleric.  Leo  X  was  a  good-natured 
friend  of  the  ItaHan  humanists  and  shared  their 
heathen  way  of  thinking.  A  saying  of  his  is  re- 
ported, though  we  cannot  make  sure  of  its  au- 
thenticity, a  saying  characteristic  enough  of  the 
reputation  which  he  bore :  "  'Tis  known  how  much 
that  fable  about  Christ  has  helped  us."  Thus  the 
Papacy  arrived  at  the  derision  of  its  own  religious 
basis.  The  idea  had  lived  to  its  end  and  its  rights 
were  forfeit.  This  must  not  be  understood  to  mean 
that  it  never  had  had  any  rights,  that  it  had  not 
been  a  beneficial  institution  for  the  education  of  the 
crude  peoples,  but  the  rights  which  it  had  in  its 
own  time  were  forfeited  with  the  Reformation  and 
perhaps  even  before, —  and  they  were  forfeited  for- 
ever. 

From  such  a  disintegration  of  the  Hierarchy,  we 
must  turn  back  and  consider  the  period  of  its  great- 
est success,  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
It  was  at  that  time  that  it  acquired  its  most  power- 
ful supports  in  the  mendicant  orders,  the  Francis- 
cans and  Dominicans. 

The  founder  of  the  Franciscan  Order  was  Saint 
Francis  of  Assisi,  the  most  attractive  of  all  the 
saints  of  the  Catholic  Church.  His  was  a  truly 
childlike,  pure  soul,  aglow  with  the  love  of  the 
suffering  Redeemer,  of  the  poor  and  the  sick,  in 
fact,  of  all  creatures,  for  Francis  regarded  the  an- 
imals and  the  flowers,  the  sun  and  the  stars,  the 
wind  and  the  water  and  the  fire,  as  his  dear  broth- 

163 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

ers  and  sisters.  His  was  an  enthusiastic  love  of 
all,  by  which  there  appears  a  new  sesthetic,  mystic 
feeling  for  nature  in  the  world, —  as  full  of  prom- 
ise as  the  rose  of  sunset.  After  youthful  years 
of  gaiety  the  young  Francis  was  overcome  by  the 
deep  pain  of  the  vanity  of  all  earthly  things,  a  deep 
world-pain  which  before  had  driven  many  into  soli- 
tude. Francis,  too,  gained  his  first  peace  through 
his  life  as  a  hermit  near  the  little  church,  the  Por- 
tiuncula,  close  to  Assisi.  But  his  heart  was  gripped 
by  those  words  of  the  Mass  which  tell  of  the  sending 
of  the  disciples  without  shoes  or  staff,  without  gold 
or  girdle.  Triumphantly  he  cried,  *'  That  it  is 
which  I  have  sought."  Thereupon  he  laid  aside 
girdle,  sandals  and  staff  and  took  to  the  road  in 
order  to  preach  to  his  people  the  Gospel  of  Jesus, 
to  proclaim  repentance,  denial  of  the  world,  and 
therewith  peace  with  God.  Comrades  newly  con- 
verted, men  of  the  lower  ranks  of  the  people,  soon 
joined  with  him,  and  they  wandered  about  beg- 
ging and  preaching.  Francis  was  convinced  firmly 
even  then  that  this  little  band,  seemingly  so  futile, 
would  be  changed  by  the  Master  into  a  great  people 
reaching  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  he  was  fully 
conscious  of  the  great  importance  of  the  mission  of 
his  work.  However,  he  did  not  desire  to  act  with- 
out the  blessing  of  the  Church  and,  in  order  to  ask 
it,  he  had  himself  introduced  to  Pope  Innocent  HI 
by  the  Bishop  of  Assisi.  At  first  the  Pope  is  said 
to  have  received  him  in  hard  and  imperious  fashion 

164 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

but  the  humble  submission  of  Francis  moved  him 
so  that  he  granted  his  blessing  and  gave  him  per- 
mission to  preach  even  though  Francis  lacked  the 
priestly  ordination;  he  did,  however,  reserve  the 
formal  confirmation.  Francis  was  thus  enabled  to 
begin  the  organization  of  his  comrades  who  called 
themselves  Minors,  less  than  the  others.  They 
were  not  to  attach  themselves  to  monasteries,  but 
were  to  go  about  as  itinerant  preachers,  caring  for 
the  souls  of  the  poor  and  the  sick,  and  meeting 
once  every  two  years,  at  Easter,  at  the  Portiuncula 
Church.  Like  Buddha,  Francis  was  at  first  filled 
with  misgivings  and  doubts  toward  the  women,  but 
this  was  changed  by  Clara  Scifi,  who  revered  him 
greatly  and  begged  him  to  present  her  as  the  bride 
of  the  Master.  Practically  Francis  abducted  her, 
though  with  her  consent,  from  her  parents'  house. 
He  took  her  to  a  friendly  nunnery,  cut  off  her  hair 
with  his  own  hands,  and  consecrated  her  as  a  nun. 
It  was  a  pure,  delicate,  entirely  Platonic  romantic 
relation  which  existed  between  Saint  Francis  and 
his  visionary  friend,  Clara  Scifi.  For  her  sake  he 
founded  the  Order  of  Santa  Clara,  which  became  the 
woman's  section  of  the  Franciscan  Order.  To  the 
Franciscan  monks  and  nuns,  there  was  added  a  third 
circle,  that  of  the  lay  brothers  and  sisters,  under 
the  name  of  the  Tertiaries.  They  remained  of  the 
world,  they  married,  and  simply  obligated  them- 
selves to  live  a  pious  life  in  the  fulfilment  of  all 
Church  duties.     These  Tertiaries  became  the  popu- 

i6s 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

lar  basis  of  the  mendicant  orders  who  thus  gained 
a  strong  influence  over  all  ranks,  but  especially  over 
the  lowest  masses  of  people. 

After  his  death  Francis  became  the  subject  of 
countless  legends  and  was  worshipped  as  a  wonder- 
working savior,  the  image  of  the  Redeemer.  Ac- 
cording to  a  report,  not  entirely  verified,  Francis 
is  said  to  have  borne  the  stigmata  of  his  Master.  In 
direst  need,  the  appeal  to  the  dead  was  considered 
so  effective  and  of  such  miraculous  power  that  the 
saying  arose  of  him :  "  He  hears  even  those  whom 
God  Himself  doth  not  hear."  Thus  he  is  more 
benevolent  or  more  powerful  than  the  love  of  God 
Himself.  Protestant  zealots  have  decried  this  as 
blasphemy.  However,  they  overlooked  the  fact  that 
in  this  case  there  is  another  expression  of  that  same 
instinct  leading  to  the  worship  of  human  medi- 
ators which,  in  fact,  lay  at  the  basis  of  the  worship 
of  Jesus.  In  any  event,  Francis  of  Assisi,  who 
did  not  merely  play  sentimentally  with  the  Gospel 
ideal  of  poverty  but  held  it  in  full  earnest,  had 
far  more  similarity  and  relationship  to  Jesus  than 
had  all  the  reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
certainly  more  than  those  modern  Protestants  who 
preach  theoretically  the  return  to  primitive  Chris- 
tianity but  practically  harbor  no  such  thought !  The 
unprejudiced  historian  has  not  the  slightest  doubt 
on  this  subject. 

All  of  this  gives  rise  to  the  question:  Why  did 
not  the  decisive  reform  of  the  Church  emanate  from 

i66 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

Francis?  And  this  is  the  answer:  Because  there 
was  lacking  in  him,  despite  all  his  love  and  imitation 
of  Jesus,  the  Pauline  Christlike  spirit,  the  spirit 
of  personal  freedom  in  God,  and  because  in  him 
its  place  was  too  powerfully  held  by  the  legal  and 
Church  spirit  which  enslaves  the  personality.  By 
this  devotion  to  Church,  the  poverty  ideal  of  Francis 
differs  from  that  of  the  heretical  Waldenses.  It 
must  be  conceded,  nevertheless,  that  the  subjection 
to  the  Papal  rulership  guaranteed  the  continuation 
and  persistence  of  Francis's  life  work.  For  its  in- 
ner purity  that  dependence  was  fraught  with  dan- 
ger. As  the  mightiest  instrument  of  the  Church, 
the  Franciscan  order  soon  became  the  main  repre- 
sentative of  all  Church  evils,  of  superstition,  of 
hierarchical  greed  and  moral  corruption.  The  vow 
of  poverty  did  not  deter  the  Franciscans  from  build- 
ing the  most  marvelous  monasteries,  from  gather- 
ing the  greatest  treasures,  wdiich,  they  declared, 
were  treasures  that  they  were  merely  using  while 
their  actual  proprietor  was  the  Pope.  Certainly 
this  was  nothing  more  than  a  formal  fiction.  No 
Order  was  so  eager  to  glorify  the  Papacy  as  the 
Franciscans  and  the  Order  of  the  Dominicans,  which 
had  been  founded  by  Dominic  about  the  same  time, 
and  which  reckoned  it  their  main  merit  that  they 
either  converted  or  suppressed  heretics.  The 
Dominicans  then  became  the  craftiest  masters  of 
the  inquisition;  this  fame  was  theirs  beyond  all 
other  Orders.     In  the  struggle  between  the  popes 

167 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

and  the  kings  and  emperors,  the  mendicant  friars 
were  the  troop  militant  of  the  Pope  and  they  egged 
the  peoples  on  against  their  political  superiors  in 
favor  of  the  popes.  The  disgraceful  trade  in  in- 
dulgences, by  which  forgiveness  for  sin  was 
achieved  for  gold,  lay  in  their  hands.  This  trade 
in  indulgences  came  in  consequence  of  the  crusades 
and  at  first  meant  the  relief  from  some  other  kind 
of  performance,  such  as  the  promised  share  in  a 
crusade  or  similar  pilgrimage,  but  soon  it  came  to 
mean  the  release  from  all  the  punishments  which 
the  Church  might  impose  here  or  beyond,  and  thus 
finally  it  became  a  means  by  which  forgiveness  of 
sins  and  release  from  guilt  might  be  bought.  Out 
of  these  mendicant  Orders  came  celebrated  theo- 
logians, such  as  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  Dominican, 
and  Duns  Scotus,  the  Franciscan.  In  general,  how- 
ever, the  mendicant  Orders  became  the  gathering 
places  of  all  such  superstitions  as  feared  the  light. 
The  Franciscans  were  the  bitterest  enemies  of  all 
the  scientific  activities  of  the  humanistic  scholars. 
Thus  does  the  history  of  the  mendicant  monastic 
Orders  confirm  that  which  had  been  shown  by  the 
failure  of  the  reform  Councils,  namely  that  an  in- 
ner renewal  of  Christianity  might  not  be  expected 
from  the  Roman  papal  Church. 

The  instinct  of  the  simple  folk-consciousness  had 
long  felt  that,  hence  the  religious  awakening  of  the 
last  mediaeval  centuries  was  mainly  through  inim- 
ical attitude  toward  Church  and  clerics.     It  was 

168 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

thus  also  with  the  Waldenses.  Their  founder  was 
Peter  Waldo,  a  rich  citizen  of  Lyons,  who  was 
inspired  to  the  ideal  of  Gospel  poverty  and  apos- 
tolic teaching  by  the  reading  of  the  Gospel  writings. 
At  first  Waldo  did  not  desire  to  break  w^ith  the 
papal  Church.  He  merely  asked  permission  from 
the  Pope  for  lay  preaching.  Such  permission  was 
granted  and  then  withdrawn  on  account  of  suspicion 
of  heresy.  A  new  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  clever 
Innocent  III  to  maintain  ''  the  brotherhood  of  the 
poor  "  in  the  Church  had  no  permanent  result.  The 
stronger  section  of  the  Waldenses  soon  cut  loose 
entirely  from  the  Church  and  declared  it  to  be  a 
synagogue  of  evil  doers,  the  Babylonian  whore,  and 
her  servants  to  be  hirelings,  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind,  whose  places  were  to  be  taken  by  apostolic 
itinerant  preachers.  They  denied  the  papal  power 
of  the  keys,  the  efficacy  of  the  saints,  and  the  doc- 
trine of  hellfire,  etc.  But  with  all  their  opposition 
against  the  clerics,  they  soon  formed,  among  them- 
selves, a  new  set  of  clerics  who  were  to  be  entirely 
without  property  and  wives.  They  were  soon  di- 
vided into  several  hierarchical  ranks  and  they  alone 
had  the  privilege  of  giving  the  sacrament.  The 
Waldenses  held  fast  to  the  idea  of  the  priest  Church 
and  rejected  it  only  in  the  form  of  the  Roman 
priesthood.  Later  they  became  acquainted  with  the 
Hussites  and  with  the  reformation  of  Luther  and, 
it  seems,  changed  and  purified  their  former  doc- 
trines. 

169 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

"  The  Apostolic  Brothers "  were  more  radical 
than  the  Waldenses.  They  prophesied  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  papal  hierarchy  by  the  victorious  advent 
of  a  king;  but  with  the  rejection  of  the  ecclesiastical 
order  they  demanded  also  the  rejection  of  the  civic 
order.  A  fearful  bath  of  blood  made  an  end  to 
the  greater  part  of  their  adherents. 

"  The  Brothers  of  the  Free  Spirit "  accepted  the 
pantheism  of  the  Parisian  theologian,  Amalric  of 
Bena,  and  deduced  from  it  that  practical  indif- 
ferentism  which  lay  beyond  good  and  evil;  they 
demanded  equality  and  freedom,  as  well  as  com- 
munity of  goods  and  wives. 

"  The  Friends  of  God,"  in  Alsace,  were  more 
harmless  and  so,  too,  were  the  "  Brothers  of  the 
Common  Life,"  founded  by  Gerhardt  Groot,  along 
the  lower  Rhine.  They  practised  a  kind  of  prac- 
tical piety  after  the  fashion  of  the  mystics,  Tauler, 
Ruysbroek,  Thomas  ä  Kempis.  They  were  indif- 
ferent toward  the  Church,  but  their  attitude  was 
not  inimical.  So  strong  was  their  denial  of  the 
world  and  so  narrow  their  circle  of  thought  that 
they  could  not  directly  affect  and  effect  a  renewal 
of  the  Church. 

The  most  distinct  predecessor  of  the  Reforma- 
tion was  John  Wycliffe,  the  famous  Oxford  theo- 
logian who  first  made  a  name  for  himself  by  his 
bold  defense  of  his  university  against  the  shame- 
less importunities  of  the  mendicant  monks  and 
the  French   Popes.     When  Pope  Urban  VI  con- 

170 


Passing  of  the  Middle  Ages 

demned  him,  Wycliffe  advanced  to  an  opposition 
against  the  entire  Church  system.  He  character- 
ized the  Pope  as  the  apocalyptic  man  of  sin,  and 
reverence  of  him  as  blasphemous  idolatry.  The 
mendicant  monks,  he  called  the  army  of  the  anti- 
Christ,  the  dogma  of  transubstantiation  (dogma  of 
the  changing  of  the  bread)  as  both  unevangelical 
and  unreasonable  error.  According  to  Wycliffe, 
the  true  Church  is  no  other  than  a  community  of 
those  chosen  for  bliss  and  among  them  there  is  no 
difference  between  priests  and  laymen.  Christ  alone 
is  to  be  acknowledged  as  the  head  and  the  Holy 
Scriptures  as  the  only  law.  In  order  to  make 
this  one  valid  source  of  truth  the  common  posses- 
sion of  all,  Wy cliff e  began  a  translation  of  the 
Bible  into  English;  the  hierarchy  strongly  con- 
demned this  as  an  invasion  of  its  privilege  and  a 
profanation  of  sacred  things.  Wycliffe  was  par- 
ticularly incensed  by  the  sale  of  indulgences  which 
treated  guilt  and  merit  as  material  things  separable 
from  the  personal  will,  whereby  all  personal  re- 
sponsibility would  be  set  aside.  This  was  an  at- 
tack upon  one  of  the  worst  and  most  vulnerable 
points  of  the  Catholic  Church  system;  it  was  the 
same  attack  which  Luther  later  made.  Even  after 
his  death,  the  Council  of  Constance  condemned  Wy- 
cliffe, ordered  his  body  dug  up  from  the  grave  and 
had  it  burned. 

The  views  of  Huss  concerning  the  Church  were 
suggested  by  Wycliffe.     He  worked  on  the  lines  of 

171 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Wycliffe,  at  Prague,  and  was  put  under  the  ban  by 
Pope  John  XXIII.  He  appealed  to  Christ  and  a  gen- 
eral Council.  He  was  invited  to  attend  the  Coun- 
cil of  Constance  and  went  there  armed  with  Em- 
peror Sigismund's  letter  of  protection.  Unfortu- 
nately, Sigismund  allowed  himself  to  be  talked  over 
by  the  Roman  prelates  who  said  that  a  promise 
need  not  be  kept  to  a  heretic,  and  he  gave  poor  Huss 
over  to  the  hatred  of  his  theological  and  political 
enemies.  In  the  summer  of  1415  he  was  burned; 
but  the  flames  of  that  funeral  pyre  lit  all  the  Hus- 
site wars  and  far  more,  for  they  were  the  begin- 
nings of  the  later  religious  wars. 


172 


BOOK  II 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CHRIS- 
TIANITY  SINCE   THE 
REFORMATION 


CHAPTER  IX 

RENAISSANCE   AND   GERMAN    REFORMATION 

During  our  last  session  we  found  that,  from 
the  fourteenth  century  on,  Christendom  was  full  of 
a  lively  feeling  of  a  deep-rooted  conflict  between  the 
idea  and  the  reality  of  the  Church;  it  experienced 
the  need  of  a  reform  of  the  Church  from  the  top 
through  all  its  members.  We  saw,  too,  that  all  at- 
tempts at  reform,  officially  on  the  part  of  the  Coun- 
cils, and  heretically  by  sects  and  individual  theo- 
logians, ever  proved  fruitless  failures. 

The  question  arises:  How  is  it  that  this  need 
should  have  been  so  strongly  felt  and  yet  the  Refor- 
mation not  have  come  about  much  earlier  than 
through  Luther?  Fundamentally,  I  think  there 
were  two  reasons  underlying  this  phenomenon. 
First,  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the 
ground  had  not  been  sufficiently  prepared  for  a 
general  reformation.  The  Church's  view  of  the 
world  still  held  men  too  closely  and  their  horizon 
was  entirely  too  narrow.  Men  had  not  yet  awak- 
ened to  a  consciousness  of  personal  independence. 
This  first  condition  of  any  successful  reformation 
was  brought  about  by  the  Renaissance  at  the  close 
of  the  fifteenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 

175 


The  Development  of  ChristianiXy 

century.  Second,  to  the  Renaissance  there  was 
added  the  concentration  of  religious  striving  for  one 
thoroughgoing,  comprehensible,  religious  idea  such 
as  was  possible  only  in  a  personality  of  such  deep 
religious  quality  and  at  the  same  time  of  such  uni- 
versal popularity  as  appeared  in  the  person  of 
Luther. 

By  Renaissance,  we  understand,  in  general,  the 
revival  of  the  sciences  in  the  fourteenth  and  fif- 
teenth centuries.  Actually,  it  was  far  more  than  a 
mere  literary  movement.  The  Renaissance  was 
the  awakening  of  an  independent  mode  of  thinking 
and  of  a  natural  manner  of  feeling,  for  which  proto- 
types were  sought  among  the  men  of  Graeco-Roman 
antiquity;  it  is  also  the  elevation  of  the  personality 
to  a  consciousness  of  its  natural  human  rights 
against  all  fetters  of  Church  dogma  and  customs. 
People  were  tired  of  looking  at  the  world  through 
the  glasses  of  scholastic  pseudo-science,  they  longed 
for  the  fountains  of  purer  truth  and  beauty,  and 
they  believed  that  they  found  these  in  the  art,  the 
poetry  and  the  philosophy  of  Graeco-Roman  an- 
tiquity. For  this  purpose,  they  called  teachers  of 
the  Greek  language  and  literature  from  Constanti- 
nople to  Italy,  they  gathered  the  manuscripts  of 
poets,  philosophers  and  historians.  Plato,  the  phil- 
osopher, became  the  favorite  teacher  of  these  new 
thinkers.  Art  treasures  were  dug  up  and  the  dust 
of  centuries  which  covered  them  was  removed. 
These  treasures  of  art  and  science  were  collected  in 

176 


German  Reformation 

museums  and  libraries ;  taste  and  style  were  formed 
by  a  study  of  them,  and  thus  the  attempt  was  made 
to  widen  the  horizon.  The  Italian  humanists,  how- 
ever, did  not  go  beyond  a  mere  imitation  of  the 
ancient  form  in  prose  and  poetry,  while  in  conduct 
theirs  was,  at  the  same  time,  an  imitation  of  the 
heathen  manner  of  life  which  consisted  in  a  separa- 
tion of  discipline  and  custom  from  the  natural. 
With  all  this  there  was  not  the  faintest  idea  of  a 
renewal  of  religion  and  the  Church.  Outwardly, 
the  humanists  conformed  to  Church  regulations, 
but  as  for  themselves  they  never  concealed  their 
disrespect  toward  Church  doctrine.  It  is  self-evi- 
dent that  this  indifferentism  was  not  the  ground 
from  which  any  positive  reform  could  arise. 

All  this  changed  when  the  humanistic  sciences 
spread  among  the  peoples  north  of  the  Alps,  when 
the  schools  of  the  larger  cities  of  the  realm  and  sev- 
eral local  universities  cultivated  them.  Then  there 
awoke  a  study  of  the  ancients  with  an  earnest  spirit 
of  scientific  research  and  testing  which  soon  could 
not  desist  from  the  very  sources  of  religion  and  the 
sacred  writings  of  the  Bible.  Just  at  the  right 
moment,  the  new  invention  of  the  art  of  printing 
came  to  help  this  new  pressure  of  the  spirit.  In 
the  year  1455,  Gutenberg  was  able  to  send  out  into 
the  world,  from  the  press  at  Maintz,  the  first  printed 
Bible.  In  the  same  year  Reuchlin  was  born,  and 
soon  thereafter,  1467,  Erasmus.  These  are  the  two 
most  famous  and  most  deserving  representatives  of 

177 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

German  humanism,  particularly  because  they  ap- 
plied their  wealth  of  learning  to  the  service  of 
Biblical  research.  In  conscious  contrast  to  the  Ital- 
ian humanists,  Reuchlin  devoted  himself  to  the  study 
of  the  Hebrew  language,  and  by  the  publication  of 
the  first  Hebrew  grammar  in  1 506,  he  made  possible 
a  study  of  the  Old  Testament  in  its  original  lan- 
guage. When  the  Dominicans  made  this  profana- 
tion of  Holy  things  the  reason  for  bitter  perse- 
cutions, Reuchlin's  name  was  the  banner  of  the  Ger- 
man humanists  against  the  ''  Obscurantists/'  Then 
appeared  those  Epistolce  obscuroriim  viroriim  in 
which  the  ignorance  and  vulgarity  of  the  monks 
was  set  forth  for  the  gaiety  of  all  Europe.  Eras- 
mus was  the  acknowledged  head  of  the  learned 
world  of  his  day.  He  knew  well  the  dire  need  of 
the  Church  and  sought  to  reform  it  by  substituting 
genuine  scientific  theology  based  on  a  healthy  un- 
derstanding of  the  New  Testament  and  the  Church 
for  scholastic  pseudo-science.  In  15 16,  he  pub- 
lished a  critically  purified  text  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment with  a  Latin  translation  and  notes  added. 
Later  he  prepared  editions  of  the  Church  Fathers 
with  prefaces  and  notes,  thus  equipping  the  armory 
of  the  reformers  for  their  struggle  against  the 
hierarchy  and  Scholasticism.  It  ought  not  to  be  a 
personal  reproach  against  Erasmus  that  he  himself 
did  not  become  a  reformer,  for  his  retiring  and 
sickly  student  nature  was  terrified  by  the  tumult 
of  the  open  struggle.     Truly  he  did  what  he  could ; 

178 


German  Reformation 

he  did  that  for  which  he  was  called,  in  that  by  his 
scientific  work  he  prepared  the  ground  in  which, 
alone,  the  seed  of  the  great  reformers  could  thrive. 
Such  was  the  merit  of  Erasmus,  and  of  Reuchlin. 
What  neither  the  great  powers  of  the  Church  nor 
the  lights  of  humanistic  science  had  been  able  to 
achieve  was  brought  about  by  the  simple  Augus- 
tine monk,  Martin  Luther.  Neither  the  demands 
of  Church  politics  nor  critical  doubts  of  science 
were  his  starting  point,  but  a  genuine  mediaeval  fear 
of  the  wrath  of  God  had  driven  him  into  the  mon- 
astery, and  there,  in  the  hot  struggle  for  the  salva- 
tion of  his  own  soul,  he  experienced  the  inadequacy 
of  Catholic  means  of  redemption  and  of  monkish 
castigation.  There  he  found  release  from  the  need 
of  his  soul  in  the  Pauline  belief  in  the  grace  of  God 
and  justification  by  faith.  This  evangelical  con- 
viction, tested  in  his  own  experience  by  Luther, 
came  into  direct  conflict  with  the  senseless  disorder 
of  the  Catholic  sale  of  indulgences  as  it  w^as  then 
practised  in  Germany  by  the  Dominican,  Tetzel. 
This  conflict  was  the  cause  of  Luther's  appearance 
as  a  reformer.  But  even  when  Luther  nailed  his 
celebrated  theses  on  the  doors  of  the  church  at  Wit- 
tenberg, he  was  not  conscious  of  any  conflict  with 
the  Church  and  much  less  was  it  his  purpose  to 
bring  about  conflict.  Not  until  the  Leipsic  dispute 
with  Eck,  who  tried  to  embarrass  Luther  by  having 
him  called  before  the  Council,  was  he  led  to  free 
himself  entirely  from  Church  authority.     "  I  be- 

179 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

lieve  that  I  am  a  Christian  theologian  and  Hve  in 
the  realm  of  truth,  therefore  I  will  be  free  and  will 
give  myself  prisoner  to  no  authority,  be  it  Council, 
or  Emperor,  or  Pope,  in  order  that  I  may  with  full 
confidence  confess  all  that  I  have  known  to  be  truth, 
whether  it  be  accepted  or  rejected  by  a  Council. 
Why  should  I  not  dare  the  attempt  when  I,  one, 
can  cite  a  better  authority  than  a  Council  ?  " 

This  better  authority  was  Holy  Writ,  in  so  far 
as  it  coincided  with  his  religious  experience  and  evi- 
denced itself  as  divine  truth  and  as  the  revelation 
of  the  bliss-bringing  grace  of  God.  Not  as  an  ac- 
tual collection  of  Biblical  books  was  Scripture  an 
unconditional  authority  for  him.  He,  too,  exer- 
cised his  religious  criticism  upon  them.  He  judged 
of  the  old  Prophets  that  they  had  not  built  always 
with  gold  and  silver,  but  that  chaff  and  straw  re- 
mained. He  compared  the  story  of  Jonah  with 
the  fables  of  Greek  antiquity,  and  the  Epistle  of 
James  he  called  an  insipid  epistle,  and  the  Apoc- 
alypse of  John  he  considered  entirely  non-apos- 
tolic because  his  spirit  could  not  rest  in  this 
book.  "  What  does  not  impel  Christ,  that  is  not 
apostolic,  even  though  Saints  Peter  and  Paul  teach 
it.  However,  whatever  preaches  Christ,  that  would 
be  apostolic,  even  though  it  were  taught  by  Judas, 
Ananias,  Pilate,  or  Herod,"  that  is,  Scripture  as 
a  whole  is  not  an  unconditional  authority  for 
Luther,  but  only  that  part  of  it  which  he  recog- 
nizes as  its  Christian  kernel  and  can  acknowledge 

i8o 


German  Reformation 

as  such  because  it  satisfies  and  corresponds  to  his 
own  reHgious  need.  In  so  far  we  may  say  that,  for 
Luther,  the  highest  court  is  the  inner  conviction  of 
the  faithful  heart  which  has  become  certain  of  its 
God,  and  that  is  the  new  principle  of  Protestantism, 
—  the  religious  inwardness  and  self-sufficiency  of 
the  pious  personality,  its  independence  of  all  medi- 
ators and  mediums.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  Luther 
did  not  logically  carry  out  this  principle,  but  that 
it  was  limited  in  him  by  his  attachment  to  the  his- 
torical, traditional  form  of  his  faith,  and  the  con- 
sequences of  this  soon  became  apparent.  First, 
let  us  view  this  new  principle  as  the  foundation  of 
a  new  world  of  faith  and  life,  clearly  presented  in 
the  three  great  reformatory  writings  of  the  year 
1520. 

In  the  book  To  the  Christian  Nobility  of  the  Ger- 
man Nation,  concerning  the  Improvement  of  the 
Christian  Rank,  the  general  priesthood  of  all  Chris- 
tians as  against  the  religiously  privileged  rank  of 
priesthood,  is  taught,  and  the  hierarchical  claims 
of  the  latter  are  unequivocally  rejected  as  being  un- 
evangelical.  Thereupon  a  healthy  moral  order  of 
the  whole  of  civic  life  on  the  basis  of  national  self- 
decision,  independent  of  Roman  guardianship  and 
exploitation,  is  demanded  and  the  outlines  of  such 
a  new  formation  drawn.  In  the  sermon.  On  the 
Freedom  of  the  Christian  Man,  the  sum  of  a  Chris- 
tian life  is  drawn  in  characteristic  fashion.  A 
Christian   man   is   the    free   master   of   all   things 

181 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

through  the  faith,  which  is  none  other  than  a  union 
of  the  soul  with  Christ  whereby  it  exchanges  all  of 
its  evils  for  his  goods.  Hence,  the  believer  is  a 
king  and  a  priest,  capable  of  all  things  and  worthy 
of  standing  before  God.  This  is  not  the  outcome 
of  his  works,  for  as  the  tree  is,  so  is  the  fruit.  Thus 
the  good  person  makes  the  good  works,  and  not 
vice  versa.  It  is  the  gratitude  for  God's  gift  of 
grace  which  impels  man  to  be  pleasing  to  God  and 
to  become  a  savior  for  his  neighbor,  as  Christ  had 
become  a  savior  for  him.  Thus,  from  faith  flow 
forth  love  and  joy  of  God,  and  out  of  love  a  free, 
joyous  life  in  the  service  of  one's  neighbor.  Only 
those  works  are  actually  good  which  are  designed  to 
serve  the  neighbor, —  not  those  which  are  calculated 
upon  reward  and  as  a  purchase  price  for  heaven. 
Faith  thus  becomes  the  root  of  a  pure,  unselfish 
morality  for  a  work-performing  Christian :  in  short, 
"  A  Christian  being  lives  not  for  himself  alone, 
but  in  Christ  through  his  faith,  and  in  his  neighbor 
through  his  love."  Here  then  is  the  noble  essence 
of  mediaeval  mysticism,  its  inner  piety  purified  by 
its  former  denial  of  the  world  and  elevated  to  be 
the  motive  of  a  deed-producing  terrestrial  morality. 
How  far  this  is  from  all  Church  ceremonial 
worship,  one  can  see  in  that  great  reformatory  tract 
entitled  On  the  Babylonian  Captivity  of  the  Church. 
The  entire  Catholic  doctrine  of  sacraments,  first 
of  all  the  Mass,  is  therein  rejected.  The  Mass  is 
not,  as  the  Catholic  Church  taught,  a  magically  effect- 

182 


German  Reformation 

ive  performance  of  the  priest,  not  sacrifice  and  work 
of  men,  but  the  promise  of  the  Word  combined  with 
the  sign,  which  is  effective  not  in  itself  but  only 
through  faith,  through  that  faith  which  is  the  real 
eating  and  drinking.  In  fact,  faith  effects  that 
which  baptism  symbolically  means,  namely,  the  death 
of  the  former  and  the  resurrection  of  the  new,  spir- 
itual man.  The  other  sacraments  are  rejected  as 
unbiblical,  so  too  the  monastic  vows,  the  confes- 
sional, the  sacramental  consecration  of  priests  and 
the  canonical  laws  of  marriage.  The  purely  Prot- 
estant, fundamental  thought  of  this  treatise  is  the 
nondependence  of  the  personal  redemption  of  Chris- 
tians upon  sacraments  offered  by  priests.  This 
thought  is  again  worked  out  in  the  treatise :  Instruc- 
tion for  Children  of  the  Confessional.  Therein  he 
says :  "  Would  the  priest  give  up  the  sacrament, 
then  must  he  let  sacrament,  altar,  priest,  and  Church 
go  hence.  For  the  divine  word  is  more  than  all 
things,  'tis  that  which  the  soul  cannot  get  on  with- 
out, though  it  can  do  without  sacraments.  Then 
will  the  right  Bishop  Himself  feed  thee  with  the 
spiritual  sacrament.  Therefore  take  heed  and  let 
no  thing  be  so  great  that  it  can  drive  thee  contrary 
to  thine  own  conscience." 

As  a  consequence  of  this  independence  of  the 
personal  conscience  toward  the  sacramental  acts  of 
the  priests,  there  ought  to  follow  the  independence 
of  conviction  as  to  the  dogmatic  laws  of  the  Church; 
but  as  to  this  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  period 

183 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  Reformation  was  not  ripe  for  such  a  general 
recognition  of  freedom  of  conscience  and  convic- 
tion. At  that  time  each  party  demanded  freedom 
for  itself  and  denied  it  to  the  others.  It  was  not 
long  before  the  conclusion  of  personal  freedom  of 
conscience  was  practically  drawn.  However,  it 
must  be  especially  remarked  that  Luther  at  least, 
differing  therein  from  all  the  others  reformers, 
fundamentally  rejected  compulsion  in  matters  of 
conscience.  In  his  book,  Concerning  the  Bounds 
of  Obedience  toward  Temporal  Superiors,  he  says : 
"  God  can  and  will  have  nobody  to  rule  over  the  soul 
excepting  only  Himself.  To  Him  alone  can  the 
thoughts  of  the  soul  be  plain.  Therefore,  it  is  in 
vain  and  impossible  to  compel  by  force  this  belief  or 
that  belief.  Force  does  not  do  it.  It  is  a  free  work 
in  faith,  to  which  no  one  can  be  forced.  God's 
word  should  do  battle  here.  If  that  can  achieve 
nothing,  then  the  thing  will  have  to  be  left  undone 
by  temporal  force.  Heresy  is  a  spiritual  thing  that 
cannot  be  scourged  with  iron  and  that  cannot  burn 
in  any  fire."  In  fact,  these  are  the  fundamentals 
of  the  modern  freedom  of  conscience  which  Luther, 
hastening  far  ahead  of  his  time,  clearly  recognized. 
Thus  we  may  say  that  Luther's  writings  of  the 
years  from  1520  to  1523  are  the  boundary  stones 
of  the  new  period.  They  are  the  genuine  expres- 
sion of  the  Protestant  spirit  in  which  the  Renais- 
sance, the  awakening  of  man  to  the  modern  con- 
sciousness   of    personality,    came    into    religious 

184 


German  Reformation 

activity.  If  we  add  the  invaluable  gift  which 
Luther  made  to  our  people  in  that  translation  (be- 
gun on  the  Wartburg)  of  the  Bible  into  a  generally 
comprehensible  and  warm  German  language  —  if 
we  consider  the  superhuman  impression  made  by  his 
personal  heroic  courage  as  evidenced  from  the  very 
beginning  when  he  burned  the  papal  bull  on  his  way 
to  Worms,  and  his  attitude  in  Worms,  where  he 
gave  testimony  of  his  evangelical  faith  before  Em- 
peror, princes  and  prelates,  in  untrammeled  and 
undisguised  fashion  —  if  we  take  all  these  things 
together,  then  we  can  understand  the  tremendous 
inspiration,  the  popular  rejoicing  which  went  out 
toward  him  from  all  circles  of  the  German  realm 
and  from  far  beyond  its  borders.  The  pious  souls 
found  therein  the  fulfilment  of  their  longing  for 
immediate  inner  communion  with  God.  The 
humanistically  cultured  found  therein  freedom  from 
superstition,  from  spiritless  ceremonies,  and  from 
unnatural  monasticism.  Those  bent  upon  national 
and  social  things  found  therein  freedom  from  cleri- 
cal corruption,  from  stranger  rule  of  the  Romans 
and  from  their  exploitation  of  our  people.  On  the 
occasion  of  the  first  martyrdoms  for  the  new  faith, 
Luther  could  thus  begin  his  hymn  of  victory: 

"Summertime  is  at  the  door. 
And  wintertime  is  gone. 
The  tender  flowers  are  coming  out: 
He  who  hath  thus  begun, 
He  will  have  all  well  done ! " 
1H5 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

But  oh,  there  fell  a  frost  upon  that  night  of 
spring !  It  was  that  fanatical  radicalism  —  which 
made  its  first  appearance  in  the  prophets  of  Zwickau, 
then  in  the  peasant  wars,  and  finally  in  the  horrors 
of  the  Anabaptists  of  Münster,  —  that  thus  found 
expression  and  had  to  be  choked  by  streams  of  blood. 
Luther's  popularity  thereby  suffered  a  severe  blow. 
The  conquered  accused  him  of  betraying  his  people, 
the  victors  accused  him  of  being  an  accomplice  in 
the  destructive  revolution.  Worst  of  all,  was  the 
reaction  on  Luther's  own  mood.  He  became  hesi- 
tant as  to  the  consequences  of  his  own  work  for 
freedom,  and  therewith  the  conservative,  Churchly, 
specifically  mediaeval  background  of  his  conscious- 
ness began  to  appear  more  strongly;  in  strange 
contradiction  this  mood  gained  force  over  the  newly 
won  evangelical  freedom.  At  first  this  became 
apparent  in  the  ill-boding  dispute  concerning  the 
Supper.  When  Karlstadt,  Oekolampad,  and 
Zwingli  denied  the  real  presence  of  the  body  of 
Christ  in  the  Supper  on  the  basis  of  reason  and  of 
exegesis,  Luther  stuck  to  the  evangelical  letter: 
"  This  is  my  body."  It  was  not  only  his  Bible  faith 
which  forced  him  to  this,  but  it  was  more  the  need 
of  a  firm,  tangible  pledge  of  forgiveness  of  sin  in 
the  sacrament.  To  Luther  this  seemed  to  be 
guaranteed  only  by  the  real  presence  of  the  body  of 
Christ  as  a  material,  miraculous  gift  which  might 
be  enjoyed  by  all,  even  the  unbelievers.  Thus  did 
Luther  fall  again  under  the  spell  of  the  Catholic 

i86 


German  Reformation 

magic  of  sacraments  which  he  had  decidedly  over- 
come. 

From  this  renewed  valuation  of  the  miracles  of 
the  sacrament  resulted  the  theory  of  the  omnipres- 
ence of  the  body  of  Christ.  He  is  present  not  only 
at  the  Supper.  How  could  He  be  present  at  every 
Supper  celebration  if  He  were  not  omnipresent? 
That  could  be  explained  only  by  saying  that  the 
divine  omnipresence  had  been  imparted  to  the 
human  nature  of  Jesus  at  incarnation.  The  Scho- 
lastic dogma  of  Christ,  with  all  of  the  miraculous 
and  irrational  trimmings,  was  re-established.  Thus 
the  faith  which,  in  the  original  sense  of  the  dogma  of 
justification,  had  been  nothing  more  than  a  confident 
reaching  out  for  the  grace  of  God  —  that  is  an  im- 
mediate relation  of  the  pious  heart  to  God  Himself 
—  now  became  again  a  theoretical  acceptance  of 
doctrines  of  belief,  miracles,  inconceivable  dogmas, 
and  mysteries;  and  every  one  who  would  not  and 
could  not  accept  this  doctrine  of  the  Supper,  Luther 
now  deemed  to  be  a  damned  heretic.  Such  reason 
as  opposed  these  miracles  was  howled  down  by 
Luther  as  Frau  Hulda  and  Bride  of  the  Devil 
against  whom  no  protection  was  too  strong.  Yes, 
he  praises  the  unreasonableness  of  all  revealed  doc- 
trines of  faith  from  the  fall  to  the  resurrection  of 
the  flesh ;  he  holds  it  to  be  false  to  speak  of  faith  and 
of  God's  word  in  such  fashion  .as  though  reason 
might  well  accept  them,  when  in  fact  she  opposes 
all  articles  of  faith.     He  even  lauds  as  the  strongest 

187 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

proof  of  faith  that  it  "  twists  the  neck  of  reason, 
strangles  the  beast,  and  thus  brings  Lord  God  the 
best  sacrifice  and  the  best  worship  of  God." 
Although  romantic  theologians  may  count  this 
passionate  hatred  of  reason  on  the  part  of  Luther 
to  be  another  of  his  titles  to  fame,  the  sober  histor- 
ian may  be  permitted  to  judge  that  it  was  his  weak 
side,  fraught  with  danger  for  himself  and  for  his 
lifework.  Reason,  so  mishandled  by  him,  paid  a 
bitter  revenge  upon  him  by  those  attacks  and  doubts 
which  so  fearfully  plagued  him  that  he  could  hold 
them  to  be  the  direct  works  of  the  Devil.  Naturally 
explained,  they  were  only  the  consequences  of  the 
unreconciled,  rigid  contradiction  of  the  two  souls 
in  his  one  breast  —  the  mediaeval  believing  monk, 
and  the  Protestant  free  reformer.  His  hatred  of 
reason  was  fatal  for  his  reformatory  work,  which 
stopped  half  accomplished;  it  was  fatal  for  his 
Church  which  was  burdened  again  with  the  old  blind 
dogmatic  faith ;  finally,  it  was  fatal  for  the  German 
people,  for  without  doubt  the  Lutheran  theologians 
must  bear  the  blame  for  the  greater  part  of  those 
dire  blows  of  the  seventeenth  century  brought  about 
by  their  narrow-minded  obstinacy  and  mad  heretic 
hunting. 

With  all  the  imperfection  and  backwardness  of 
Luther's  dogmatic  faith  and  of  his  Church,  we  must 
not  forget  that  his  ethics  ever  remained  good  Protes- 
tant ethics.  The  founder  of  the  Lutheran  Theolog- 
ical Church  may  have  been  caught  still  in  its  medi- 


German  Reformation 

aeval  nature,  but  the  founder  of  the  Protestant 
minister's  home,  the  loving  father  of  the  family, 
the  host  who  joked  gaily  with  his  guests,  released 
the  Protestant  world  from  the  unnaturalness  of 
Catholic  monasticism  and  from  ascetic  hatred  of 
the  world.  He  became  the  creator  of  Protestant 
morality  in  that  he  freed  the  temporal,  moral  life 
in  family  and  vocation,  in  state  and  society,  from 
the  Catholic  blemish  of  unholiness  and  reinstated 
them  in  their  dignities  and  rights,  as  God  willed. 
As  Goethe  says,  through  Luther  we  have  recovered 
the  courage  to  stand  on  God's  earth  with  a  firm  foot 
and  to  feel  ourselves  God-given  human  natures. 
According  to  the  judgment  of  Wundt,  the  modern 
philosopher,  Luther's  ethics  is  at  once  worldly  and 
religious :  worldly  in  the  sense  that  it  imposes  upon 
men  work  and  activity  in  the  world,  as  a  duty ;  and 
religious  in  so  far  as  faith  is  the  source  from  which 
all  fulfilment  of  duty  springs.  The  same  philos- 
opher remarks  correctly  that  Luther  was  in  error 
when  he  considered  his  ethical  world-view  to  be  a 
return  to  primitive  Christianity.  Luther,  rather, 
brought  a  new  ethics  to  the  world;  with  its  joyous 
courage  of  life  that  ethics  belongs  to  the  Renais- 
sance and  is  far  removed  from  world-fleeing,  primi- 
tive Christianity  and  medisevalism,  but  these  latter 
for  their  part  differ  just  as  decidedly  from  the 
ancient  heathen  ideal  of  culture  by  their  religious 
motivation.  Luther's  active  Christianity  is  the 
combination  of  the  humanistic  ideal  of  the  Renais- 

189 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

sance  with  Germanic  Christianity,  and  that  is  the 
essence  of  Protestantism  altogether. 

Melanchthon,  the  friend  and  assistant  of  Luther, 
represented  in  remarkable  measure  the  humanistic 
side  of  the  Reformation.  Luther  had  urged  him  to 
theological  studies,  for  Melanchthon,  by  training 
and  tendency,  had  been  a  humanistic  philologian 
closer  to  Erasmus  than  to  Luther.  He  shared 
Erasmus's  fear  of  the  tumult  and  the  public 
struggle.  At  the  Augsburg  Parliament,  this  fear- 
fulness  led  him  to  the  most  doubtful  concessions  so 
that  the  Protestant  princes  actually  disavowed  him. 
For  this  lack  of  courage,  however,  he  made  up 
brilliantly  by  his  scientific  knowledge.  In  his  Loci 
communes  (which  grew  out  of  lectures  on  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans),  he  presented  the  Protestant 
ideas  in  systematic  form  for  the  first  time,  and  that 
in  purer  form  than  in  the  later  Confessio  Augus- 
tana. In  the  latter,  he  held  as  close  as  possible  to 
the  old  dogma.  In  his  first  edition  of  his  Loci  he 
intentionally  sets  aside  the  old  Church  dogmas  of 
the  trinity,  incarnation,  and  the  natures  of  Christ, 
regarding  them  as  Scholastic  hypercriticism ;  he  was 
convinced  that  it  was  enough  for  a  Christian  to 
know  what  law  and  sin  are,  and  how  man  can  arrive 
at  forgiveness  of  sin  and  the  power  of  the  good. 
In  the  beginning,  therefore,  he  held  to  the  purely 
human,  moral  side  of  the  Gospel  and  disregarded 
the  mysterious  dogmas  concerning  things  beyond; 
he  did  not  do  this  later.     Into  his  Loci,  Melanch- 

190 


German  Reformation 

thon  afterward  inserted  these  dogmas;  also  into  the 
Confessio.  Melanchthon  rendered  peculiarly  good 
service  in  the  development  of  ethics,  wherein  he 
sought  to  combine  Aristotle  with  the  Biblical  Chris- 
tian view.  In  his  teaching  of  the  lex  naturae,  of 
the  lumen  naturale,  there  is  the  humanistic  feature 
of  his  thinking,  which  differentiated  it  always  from 
rigid  Lutheran  theology.  Thereby  he  became  the 
founder  of  the  humanistic  culture  of  German  Prot- 
estantism, a  healthy  counter-balance  to  Luther's 
hatred  of  reason  and  to  the  dogmatic  zeal  of 
Lutheran  theologians.  Thereby,  he  became  the 
founder  of  the  school  system  in  Germany  and 
earned  the  honorable  title:  Praeceptor  Germaniae. 


191 


CHAPTER  X 

SWISS   REFORMATION    AND   DISSIDENTS 

At  the  same  time  with  Luther,  but  independently 
of  him,  Ulrich  Zwingli,  the  Swiss,  became  a  re- 
former. He  did  not  have  to  pass  through  the  relig- 
ious struggles  and  crises  as  Luther  did,  but  his  was 
rather  a  harmonious  nature  of  clear  and  quiet  under- 
standing and  of  a  lively  sense  of  social  obligation. 
At  the  University  of  Basle,  he  devoted  himself  to 
humanistic  studies  under  the  influence  of  the  pro- 
found scholar,  Thomas  Wittenbach,  who  early 
opened  his  eyes  to  the  valuelessness  of  Scholastic 
science  and  the  evil  of  the  commerce  in  indulgences. 
Later,  he  devoted  himself  earnestly  to  the  study  of 
the  Platonic-Stoic  philosophy  as  given  out  by  Pico 
of  Mirandola.  He  remained  ever  the  friend  of  the 
ancient  classic  and  was  convinced  that  the  works 
of  Plato,  Seneca,  and  Pindar  had  also  flowed  from 
the  source  of  the  divine  spirit.  The  result  of  this 
humanistic  culture  was  his  first  break  with  the  medi- 
aeval ecclesiastical  world-view.  When  he  became 
a  practising  minister  and  saw  the  evil  consequences 
of  clerical  rule  on  popular  morality,  he  sought  the 
sources  of  a  purer  popular  religion  and  popular 
morality  and  found  them  in  the  New  Testament; 

192 


Swiss  Reformation 

but  not  only  in  the  Pauline  dogma  of  justification 
but  also  in  the  entire  New  Testament,  and  especially 
in  the  Gospels  and  the  ethical  precepts  of  the  New 
Testament  writings.  The  purpose  of  Zwingli's 
reformatory  activity  was  not  to  find  consolation  for 
the  fear-filled  conscience  of  the  individual,  as  had 
been  the  beginning  in  the  case  of  Luther  who  based 
his  work  on  his  own  experience,  but  rather  toward 
a  renewal  of  moral  Christian  society  after  the  pat- 
tern of  the  New  Testament,  after  the  ideal  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  The  purification  of  the  Church, 
from  false  tradition  and  superstitious  ceremonial, 
was  inextricably  bound  up  for  him  with  the  refor- 
mation of  the  body  politic  according  to  the  principle 
of  Christian  ethics.  The  republican  constitution 
of  Zurich  was  both  an  opportunity  and  a  command. 
The  many-sidedness  of  his  ecclesiastical  and  politi- 
cal reform  activities  correspond  to  the  wide  horizon 
of  his  theological  world-view.  This  view  was  in 
no  wise  an  enemy  to  philosophy,  but  was,  rather, 
closely  allied  to  it.  It  was  not  the  product  of  a  deep 
inward  religious  experience  born  of  pain  and 
struggle,  as  with  Luther,  but  the  product  of  a  broad, 
clear,  intellectual  culture  and  an  earnest,  moral  con- 
science. This  culture  he  had  won  in  the  school  of 
the  ancients.  There  he  had  accustomed  himself  to 
clarity  and  logical  thinking  and  so  he  wished  to 
present  Christian  truth  in  a  well  ordered  connection 
of  comprehensible  thoughts. 

The  theology  of  Zwingli  is  the  fust  presentation 
193 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  Christian  faith  freed  from  all  Scholasticism. 
It  stands  much  closer  to  modern  thinking  than  the 
theology  of  all  other  reformers.  This  is  most 
clearly  seen  in  Zwingli's  teaching  concerning  sin  and 
redemption.  According  to  Zwingli,  sin  is  the  con- 
flict of  the  spirit  and  the  flesh,  which  has  its  natural 
origin  in  the  spiritual  and  sensual  nature  of  men; 
that  it  is  native  to  them  and  did  not  enter  into  them 
from  without  appears  first  through  Adam's  fall. 
Adam's  fall  is  only  the  first  appearance  of  that 
which  necessarily  makes  its  appearance  at  some 
one  time  in  the  life  of  every  man.  As  a  natural 
breach  between  self-love  and  the  will  of  God, 
Zwingli  holds,  sin  is  more  an  inborn  sickness  than 
a  guilt.  Sin  does  not  assume  the  character  of  guilt 
until  this  inborn  sickness  makes  its  appearance  in 
individual  events  —  activities  contrary  to  the  law. 
These  are  sins  in  the  sense  of  guilt.  That  which 
is  inborn  is  not  sin  but  a  lack,  an  evil,  a  sickness, 
which  must  be  cured,  but  for  the  sake  of  which  no 
one  will  be  damned.  From  the  beginning,  God 
arranged  redemption  with  sin.  Their  beginning 
is  coeval  with  the  beginning  of  human  religion  and 
that  is  the  beginning  of  all  history.  It  is  realized 
in  history  in  the  manifold  forms  of  divine  revela- 
tion, which  is  not  merely  limited  to  the  Jewish 
people,  but  is  present  with  all  other  peoples,  particu- 
larly the  Greeks.  In  Plato  and  Seneca,  the  heathen 
philosophers,  the  divine  spirit  was  just  as  active  as 
in  the  Old  Testament  prophets.     Zwingli  thinks, 

194 


Swiss  Reformation 

therefore,  that  pious  heathen  may  also  enter  into 
bHss.  Therefore,  too,  he  cherishes  the  hope  that 
in  heaven  above  he  may  meet  the  great  heroes  of 
antiquity,  Socrates,  Numa,  Cato,  Scipio,  and  that 
he  will  make  their  personal  acquaintance  there. 
That  is  a  truly  humanistic  thought,  which  is  so  far 
removed  from  the  Augustinian  dogma  of  the  in- 
herited sin  and  damnation  of  natural  man,  that 
Luther  said,  when  he  heard  those  words  of  Zwingli, 
that  if  that  were  true  nothing  in  the  entire  Gospels 
could  be  true.  The  revelation  of  salvation  achieved 
completion  in  Christ  as  the  organ  of  the  divine 
Logos  in  which  the  rulership  of  the  spirit  over  the 
flesh  found  typical  perfection.  The  work  of  salva- 
tion, however,  does  not  rest  so  much  upon  the  suf- 
fering of  one  for  all  as  satisfaction  for  God,  but 
rather  on  the  imparting  of  His  higher  Being  to  us ; 
in  other  words,  in  the  activity  of  salvation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  which  might  also  be  called  a  higher 
potentiality  of  the  all-effective  will  of  God  in  the 
world.  The  Holy  Spirit,  too,  is  not  something 
absolutely  supernatural  thrown  in  from  without, 
but  is  rather  the  natural  and  human  in  which  there 
is  already  present  the  divine  kernel  with  the  potenti- 
ality of  higher  humanity.  The  activity  of  the 
spirit  of  God  in  man  is  faith,  that  is  the  trustful 
giving  up  of  self  of  the  creature  to  God  in  order  that 
God*s  will  shall  determine  his.  Faith  does  not 
stand  in  contradiction  to  good  works,  for  it  is  the 
impulse  to  all  good  work  as  well  as  to  knowledge. 

195 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

For  him  who  is  illumined  by  the  spirit  of  God, 
therefore,  there  is  no  longer  any  inconceivable 
mystery.  For  this  reason  the  faithful  must  not  be 
required,  as  by  Luther,  to  hate  reason  and  to 
strangle  it.  According  to  Zwingli,  faith  is  the 
highest  power  of  our  reasoning  activity,  altogether, 
and  can,  therefore,  never  come  into  conflict  with  the 
remainder  of  the  reasonableness  of  man.  Inas- 
much as  the  opposition  between  spirit  and  flesh  at 
least  partially  continues  after  the  rebirth,  faith  has 
to  test  its  reality  by  showing  itself  to  be  the  practi- 
cal energy  of  our  higher  I,  holding  the  lower  side 
of  our  nature  in  check;  this  lower  nature  subjected, 
it  must  make  it  the  organ  of  what  is  reasonable  and 
good.  It  is  the  task  of  the  believer  to  govern  the 
flesh  and  to  overcome  lawlessness  in  the  world. 
Therein  faith  demonstrates  its  reality.  In  this 
form  of  Protestantism,  the  idea  of  holiness  makes  a 
long  step  in  advance  of  Luther's  interest  in  salva- 
tion, the  interest  in  the  certainty  of  salvation. 
Thus  the  world- forming  power  of  struggling  ac- 
tivity and  puritanical  rigor  of  morals  are  the  specific 
features  of  Reformation  piety  as  early  as  Zwingli ; 
but  to  a  greater  degree  in  Calvin. 

From  this  point  of  view,  Zwingli's  conception  of 
the  Church  may  be  understood.  It  is  the  invisible 
community  of  the  chosen,  the  true  believers.  The 
visible  Church  consists  of  the  invisible  congregations 
which  hold  to  God's  word ;  and  this  visible  Church 
is  related  to  the  invisible  as  man's  body  is  related  to 

196 


Swiss  Reformation 

his  spirit.  That  is,  it  is  the  phenomenal  form  and 
organ  of  the  invisible  Church.  Because  the  con- 
gregation is  the  community  of  believers  inspired  by 
the  Divine  Spirit,  a  general  priesthood  is  her  special 
prerogative.  There  is  no  difference  between  a 
privileged  priestly  rank  and  the  laity.  Zwingli 
gives  this  one  peculiarly  Swiss  turn;  he  has  united 
with  the  general  priesthood,  the  general  judgeship  in 
spiritual  and  temporal,  in  religious  and  moral  affairs. 
This  belongs  to  the  congregation  which  is  represent- 
ed by  its  self-chosen  clerics  as  its  representatives  and 
organs.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  clerics  or  preachers 
to  care  for  the  Christian  order  of  congregational 
life  on  the  temporal,  political  side  in  conjunction 
with  the  temporal  rulers.  The  state  is  naught  else 
than  the  popular  order  of  moral  activity  on  the  part 
of  believing  Christians.  Hence,  it  is  the  place  of 
the  realization  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  which  Provi- 
dence and  redemption  strive  to  achieve.  For  the 
reformed  religion,  the  state  thus  has  a  religious 
meaning  from  this  viewpoint,  and  it  has  a  religious 
task  at  which  the  congregation  of  believers  and  the 
clerics,  their  representatives,  are  obligated  to  work 
together.  For  all  time  following  this  became  a 
most  important  thought  to  Swiss  Protestantism;  it 
did  have  its  doubtful  obverse,  as  we  shall  soon  see, 
under  Calvin.  The  state  is  the  wordly  side  of  the 
Christian  congregation  which  represents  the  king- 
dom of  God.  Thereon  rests  the  dominating  posi- 
tion which  Zwingli  occupied  in  the  communal  life 

197 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  Zurich;  the  same  with  Calvin  later  in  Geneva. 
As  regards  the  sacraments:  in  the  frame  of  this 
world-view  they  could  have  no  other  meaning  than 
as  symbols  having  far  less  value  for  the  individual 
than  for  the  congregation.  So  baptism  is  nothing 
else  than  the  sign  of  obligation  on  the  part  of  the 
individual  member  to  the  congregation.  The  Sup- 
per is  the  general  ceremony  of  thanksgiving  for 
redemption.  Christ  is  not  really  present  in  the 
bread,  as  Luther  taught,  but  spiritually  present  in 
the  mind  of  the  believer.  The  Supper,  then,  is  not 
actually  a  mystical  means  of  salvation,  but  is  a 
ceremonial  morally  active,  in  which  the  congrega- 
tion expresses  externally  and  tangibly  its  community 
of  faith  and  life;  therewith  the  communal  spirit  is 
revived  and  strengthened  in  all  the  members ;  hence 
it  is  a  morally  valuable  and  effective  ceremonial,  but 
not  a  magical  act  of  worship.  We  may  well  ask  the 
question  whether  this  view  of  the  sacraments  is 
more  adequate  for  the  Protestant  spirit  than  that  of 
Luther,  and  whether  its  passionate  rejection  on  the 
part  of  Luther  and  his  theologians  was  really  justi- 
fied. If  Luther  had  been  able  to  listen  quietly  to 
Zwingli's  conception,  at  bottom  a  simple,  clear,  and 
deeply  moral  one,  —  if  he  had  considered  it  —  how 
different  would  have  been  the  after  course  of  the 
history  of  Protestantism! 

After  Zwingli's  early  death  (he  died  as  a  hero 
with  the  sword  in  his  hand  on  the  battlefield  of 
Kappel,    1 53 1,)    the  leadership  of   Swiss   Protest- 

198 


Swiss  Reformation 

antism  fell  upon  John  Calvin.  He  was  born  in 
France  and  educated  in  law  and  theology;  from 
1 541  to  1564,  he  was  the  spiritual  leader  of  the 
Church  and  civic  communal  life  in  Geneva.  Cal- 
vin's strength  lay  in  his  art  as  the  logical  system- 
atizer  of  Protestant  theology  and  as  the  effective 
organizer  of  the  Protestant  Church  of  the  country, 
not  only  as  a  community  of  believers  but  also  as 
a  community  of  moral  living.  Both  of  these  things, 
however,  were  under  the  presupposition  of  the  cur- 
rent understanding  of  Scripture  and  the  current 
non-differentiation  between  morality  and  legality, 
between  the  power  of  the  Church  as  a  moral  in- 
stitution and  the  power  of  the  state  as  a  legal  insti- 
tution. This  difference,  so  well  known  to  us,  was 
not  known  by  that  age.  As  contained  in  his  four 
books  of  the  Institiitio  religionis  Christ iancE,  Cal- 
vin's theology  unquestionably  rises  in  formal  per- 
fection superior  to  all  the  theological  works  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  It  is  equally  certain  that  it 
stood  upon  the  ground  of  a  legal,  dogmatic  posi- 
tivism, a  positivism  which  finds  the  truth  fixed  and 
finished,  given  in  the  infallible  canon  of  divine 
revelation  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.  There- 
fore, it  is  only  a  matter  of  proper  interpretation  and 
amplification  of  doctrines  to  present  all  of  Christian 
truth  which,  on  the  basis  of  its  sources  as  uncon- 
ditional divine  authority,  must  be  considered  valid 
doctrinal  law  by  every  pious  individual.  A  critical 
judgment  of  single  parts  of  the  Bible,  such  as  can 

199 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

actually  be  found  in  Luther,  one  cannot  speak  of 
with  Calvin.  Such  criticism  of  separate  pieces  of 
the  Bible  would  have  been  regarded  as  godless 
opposition  to  divine  revelation  and  lawgiving. 
Just  as  positive  as  is  this  basis  of  the  authority  of 
Scripture,  is  also  the  point  on  which  the  whole  Cal- 
vinistic  theology  hinges ;  that  point  is  the  divine  pre- 
destination which  Calvin,  following  the  lead  of 
Augustine,  took  to  be  the  double  decision  of  the 
choice  of  one  for  bliss  and  the  condemnation  of  the 
other  to  eternal  damnation.  He  is  of  the  opinion 
that  we  must  never  ask  according  to  what  ground 
this  double  divine  decision  is  made.  Just  so  little 
may  we  complain  of  its  injustice.  For  Calvin  says 
the  ground  lies  simply  in  the  free  and  unlimited  will 
of  God,  and  this  is  the  unique  norm  of  all  righteous- 
ness. We  never  dare  to  ask  whether  that  which 
God  does  is  just;  it  is  just  because  God  so  wills  it. 
If  God  wills  to  create  a  great  part  of  mankind 
destined  to  eternal  damnation,  we  must  consider  it 
righteous  simply  because  He  wills  it  so.  To  the 
criticism  that,  by  this  fatalism,  all  moral  self- 
decision  would  be  done  away  with,  Calvin  and  his 
disciples  answer  with  the  practical  demand  upon 
each  individual  that  he  have  a  care  that  he  make 
certain  of  his  own  attachment  to  the  number  of 
those  who  are  chosen  by  the  seriousness  of  his  faith, 
by  the  sternness  of  his  moral  self-discipline,  and  by 
the  power  of  his  activity  for  the  molding  of  the 
world  to  the  honor  of  God.     Now  it  must  be  conced- 

200 


Swiss  Reformation 

ed  that  the  practical  outcome  of  this  deterministic 
doctrine  was  not  men  with  feeble  wills  or  diseased 
ones,  but,  on  the  contrary,  most  marvelous  heroes  of 
will  power.  Psychologically,  that  may  easily  be  un- 
derstood; for  a  believer  will  not  think  of  himself 
that  he  belongs  to  the  lost  but,  just  the  reverse,  be- 
cause he  is  a  believer  he  will  count  himself  with  the 
chosen;  as  one  who  is  chosen,  the  eternal  decision 
of  God  gives  him  the  firmest  possible  support  for 
his  whole  life  and  striving.  If  one  would  put  it 
that  way,  his  religious  fatalism  makes  him  immune 
from  all  the  dangers  of  this  world.  Again  accord- 
ing to  Calvin,  as  with  Zwingli,  the  Church  is  the 
invisible  community  or  sum  of  the  chosen.  It  may, 
however,  scarcely  be  called  a  community,  since  the 
individual  chosen  ones  are  scattered  all  over  the 
world  within  the  visible  Church.  The  visible 
Church  is  the  means  of  realization  of  the  invisible, 
of  the  realization  of  the  eternally  divine  decision 
of  redemption  and  choice.  In  the  faith  of  the  in- 
dividual outside  of  the  Church  there  can  be  no 
thought  of  salvation.  Therein  Calvin  differs  essen- 
tially from  Zwingli. 

The  characteristics  of  the  true  Church  are  as 
follows:  doctrine  according  to  law,  control  of  the 
sacraments,  and  Church  discipline.  Minor  devia- 
tions on  the  part  of  the  Protestant  State  Churches 
were  permitted  but  Calvin  condemns  the  Roman 
Church  most  harshly  because  of  its  fundamental  er- 
rors.   He  thinks  she  is  not  even  entitled  to  be  called 

201 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

a  Christian  Church.  It  is  remarkable  that  Calvin 
himself  throughout  shares  with  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  that  essential  characteristic  of  a  strictly 
exclusive  spirit.  It  is  a  Christian's  right  and  duty 
to  suppress  errors  of  faith  and  moral  obliquities; 
and  the  arm  of  the  political  superior  is  the  natural 
instrument  of  its  performance.  With  all  difference 
of  theoretical  foundation,  this  Church  theory 
amounts  practically  to  that  of  CathoHcism:  the 
political  superior  should  serve  as  an  instrument  of 
the  Church  in  order  that  her  teaching  of  faith  and 
morals  and  her  establishment  be  carried  out,  also 
in  order  that  the  people  of  the  separate  Christian 
communities  should  be  moulded  into  the  one  true 
congregation  of  God,  into  the  God-State  according 
to  the  Biblical  ideal.  By  preference,  Old  Testament 
models  and  Old  Testament  kings  who  carry  out  the 
will  of  the  prophets  and  the  priests  are  cited.  Dif- 
ference between  the  political  rule  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment and  the  spiritual  rule  of  the  New  is  never 
allowed. 

These  are  Calvin's  fundamental  thoughts ;  in  cor- 
respondence with  them  the  Church  and  civic,  com- 
munal hfe  of  Geneva,  and  that  of  several  daughter 
Churches  directed  by  disciples  of  Calvin,  were 
developed.  The  Church  at  Geneva  became  sim- 
ply a  Protestant  theocracy.  A  rigorous  Church 
discipHne  was  practised  there  by  means  of  a  police 
and  judicial  system  completely  submissive  to  the 
clerics.     It  was  a  Church  and  civic  regime  which 

202 


Swiss  Reformation 

governed  not  only  the  Church  faith  but  also  tHe 
temporal  and  moral  life  of  the  members  of  the  con- 
gregation to  such  extent  as  no  mediaeval  Church 
previously  had  in  the  remotest  degree.  This  strict 
Church  discipline  led  to  gross  excesses.  Of  sad 
fame  are  the  executions  of  Gruet,  the  sceptic,  and 
of  Servetus,  the  anti-trinitarian  —  both  directly 
urged  by  Calvin.  Servetus  was  not  even  a  citizen 
of  Geneva.  He  was  a  Spaniard  who  was  dwelling 
in  Geneva  merely  as  a  guest,  and  it  was  during  this 
temporary  stay  that  he  was  haled  as  a  heretic  upon 
the  urging  of  Calvin. 

In  other  things,  too,  it  was  a  fearfully  rigorous 
discipline  under  which  the  people  of  Geneva  in  that 
day  had  to  live.  Gaieties  of  every  kind,  immor- 
ality, adultery,  and  even  lighter  breaches,  such  as 
singing,  the  reading  of  trivial  songs  and  romances, 
card-playing,  theater-going,  omission  to  attend 
Church  and  communion,  the  wearing  of  extravagant 
clothing,  the  giving  of  rich  banquets,  light  speech 
concerning  Church  matters  and  persons  —  all  of 
these  were  severely  punished  and  the  penalties 
Draconic.  Haeuser,  the  historian,  rightly  remarks : 
"  This  manner  of  handling  human  beings  was  more 
Spartan  and  Old  Roman  than  it  was  Christian."  It 
was,  in  fact,  that  kind  of  discipline  with  its  totally 
brutal  suppression  of  the  individual  for  the  purposes 
of  the  weal  of  the  community.  There  are,  however, 
things  which  must  be  said  and  allowed  as  an  excuse 
for  Calvin ;  Calvin  would  not  be  rightly  judged  were 

203 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

we  not  to  take  the  following  into  consideratioa 
First,  this  system  met  the  governing  notion  of  the 
period,  in  which  the  mediaeval  view  that  heresy  is  a 
crime  which  should  be  politically  punished  was  still 
too  deeply  rooted  for  even  the  cultured  to  break 
away  from  it.  Among  the  reformers,  Luther  was 
the  only  one  who  clearly  recognized  and  uttered  that 
heresy  cannot  and  should  not  be  suppressed  by 
force.  Luther,  too,  had  a  far  finer  feeling  for  the 
difference  between  Old  and  New  Testament  religion 
than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  especially  the  then 
ruler  of  Geneva.  Then  we  must  consider,  also,  that 
this  city  was,  in  a  certain  sense,  the  border  bulwark 
of  Protestantism  and  was  surrounded  and  threat- 
ened by  powerful  enemies  of  its  civic  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal liberty.  It  was,  too,  the  refuge  city  of  many 
Protestants  who  had  to  flee  from  Catholic  countries. 
In  order  to  fuse  these  varied  elements  and  to  unite 
the  citizens,  who  were  split  up  into  parties,  so  that 
the  city  might  become  one  harmonious  whole, 
one  well  disciplined  army  of  determined  defenders 
of  civic  and  Church  communal  life  against  external 
enemies,  there  was  needed  a  discipline  so  strict, 
a  rule  and  regulation  so  stern  as  would  be 
necessary  during  the  days  of  siege  when  the  enemy 
threatens  the  fort.  Finally,  one  may  be  permitted 
to  point  out  the  success  of  these  measures.  Theo- 
cratic Geneva,  with  its  strict  Church  discipline,  did 
become  in  fact  the  most  fruitful  garden  for  the  pro- 

204 


Swiss  Reformation 

duction  of  strong,  heroic  characters  who,  under  the 
most  difficult  circumstances,  held  high  the  standard 
of  Protestantism,  opposed  the  Catholic  reaction 
not  only  with  the  patience  of  suffering  as  in  the 
Lutheran  Church,  but  also  with  the  courage  of 
attack  and  the  will  to  win  victory.  In  fact,  these 
Calvinistic  heroes  became  the  saviors  of  Protestant- 
ism when  soon  after  the  Catholic  superior  power  in 
the  world  politics  of  the  day  used  its  full  force  to 
oppress  them.  They  became  the  saviors  of  Protes- 
tant freedom  of  faith  and  conscience,  even  though 
they  were  only  struggling  for  their  freedom,  not  for 
that  of  the  others  who  did  not  acquiesce  in  their 
doctrine.  The  heroic  struggle  for  their  freedom 
resulted  in  a  gain  for  the  freedom  of  belief  and 
conscience  of  all  men.  On  the  tablets  of  the  history 
of  the  world  the  heroic  deeds  of  the  Calvinist  heroes 
of  faith  are  ineffaceably  written.  I  will  not  enter 
into  detail  here.  You  are  certainly  acquainted  with 
the  details  from  your  histories.  One  thing  only  I 
would  mention:  In  Austria,  which  was  once 
Lutheran,  Protestantism  was  entirely  destroyed  by 
the  Hapsburg  counter-reformation.  In  the  Cal- 
vinistic Netherlands,  however,  opposing  the  same 
Hapsburg  power.  Protestantism  was  victorious. 
There  you  see  the  difference  between  the  Lutheran 
religion  of  pious  emotions  and  of  suffering  patience 
as  against  the  Calvinistic  religion  of  active  will  and 
of  fighting  force.     According  to  this,  judge,  then, 

205 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

how  much  the  Protestant  world  owes  to  the  heroic 
will  power  of  Calvin  and  to  his  strict  educatory 
discipline. 

In  order  to  understand  the  Reformation  of  the 
sixteenth  century  in  its  full  meaning  as  the  turning 
point  of  two  ages,  one  must  not  confine  one's  atten- 
tion merely  to  the  two  Church  formations,  the  Lu- 
theran and  the  Swiss,  in  which  the  Protestant  prin- 
ciple gave  itself  new  Church  form  and  figure  but  in 
which  also  there  is  an  impure  mixture  of  the  old 
and  the  new  —  one  must  also  turn  one's  attention 
to  those  little  communities  and  individual  pious 
thinkers  who  were  despised  in  those  days  as  vision- 
aries and  revolutionaries  and  who  were  persecuted 
as  such;  for  in  them  an  unprejudiced  view  of  his- 
tory will  acknowledge  the  finding  of  the  freest 
representatives  of  the  Protestant  spirit,  yea  in  part 
the  prophets  of  its  later  development. 

The  various  dissidents  of  that  time  are  usually 
designated  by  the  collective  name  "  Anabaptists." 
They  were  called  thus  because  many  of  them  re- 
jected baptism  of  children  as  unevangelical  and  a 
contradiction  of  the  Protestant  principle  of  faith. 
However,  this  designation  is  inaccurate  and  hkely 
to  lead  one  astray  because  it  picks  out  a  single  and 
secondary  characteristic  which  is  in  fact  not  appli- 
cable to  all  of  them.  In  any  event,  it  is  not  appli- 
cable to  the  most  important  of  all  the  dissidents,  to 
Sebastian  Frank,  the  author  of  many  popular 
writings  ■■ —  religious,    historical,    and    geographical 

206 


Swiss  Reformation 

in  nature.  In  these  writings,  there  is  revealed  a 
spirit  of  broad  free  outlook,  deep  and  independent 
in  its  thinking.  The  Lutheran  theologians  perse- 
cuted him  as  a  vicious  heretic  simply  because  he 
took  the  Protestant  principle  of  immediate  alliance 
with  God  and  the  freedom  of  the  Christian  person- 
ality far  more  seriously  than  they  themselves  were 
either  capable  or  willing  to  take  it.  Frank  protested 
against  the  idolatry  of  the  word  of  the  Church  the- 
ologians, against  their  doctrine  of  inherited  sin, 
of  atonement  through  vicarious  satisfaction,  es- 
pecially however  against  the  compulsory  character 
of  the  new  Church,  which  seemed  to  him  to  be  a 
decline  from  the  Christian  into  the  Jewish.  The 
written  word,  which  Frank  says  the  reformers  had 
made  their  idol,  has  often  enough  deceived  and  con- 
sequently its  various  interpreters  teach  contradic- 
tory doctrines.  For  this  reason  Frank  set  up 
against  it  the  inner  word,  the  natural  life,  which 
resides  in  everyone,  even  in  the  heathen,  and  which 
spoke  out  just  as  much  in  Plato  as  it  did  in  Isaiah. 
He  makes  the  fine  remark  that  even  nature  contains 
a  word  of  God,  nature,  too,  is  a  living  bible  in 
which  the  pious  heart  can  learn  more  than  all  the 
impious  can  learn  from  the  Bible ;  for  he  who  does 
not  understand  God's  works,  he  cannot  hear  God's 
words.  Then,  too,  Adam  and  Christ  are  in  every 
man  in  so  far  as  he  is  flesh  and  spirit.  The  Christ 
of  the  flesh,  that  is  the  Savior  of  history,  was  pre- 
sented to  us  by  God  as  an  example,  that  through 

207 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

him  we  may  be  able  to  grasp  God.  He  is,  there- 
fore, the  revealer  of  God's  will,  because  in  him  all 
things  are  perfect  and  revealed,  which  were  before 
secret,  veiled,  and  unconscious  in  the  pious  heart, 
only  the  world  did  not  know  it  and  first  became 
aware  of  it  through  the  proclamation  of  Christ. 
But  the  historic  sufferings  of  Christ  must  be  re- 
peated in  all  of  his  members  and  in  us,  too,  the  word 
must  become  flesh,  suffer,  die,  and  rise  again.  As 
the  leader,  Christ  has  smoothed  the  way  and  per- 
mitted us  to  see  what  the  way  of  life  is,  but  His 
suffering  is  of  no  use  to  anyone  until  it  comes  into 
full  realization  in  him,  until  he  knows  what  God 
meant  by  him.  "  Many  now  make  an  idol  of  the 
letter,  inasmuch  as  they  do  not  even  beg  God  to  in- 
terpret His  secret  for  us.  For  Scripture  alone  can- 
not change  a  wicked  heart,  else  would  the  learned  in 
Scripture  have  been  the  most  pious.  Temples,  too, 
pictures,  feasts,  sacrifices,  and  ceremonies,  do  not 
belong  in  the  New  Testament  because  that  is  noth- 
ing more  than  the  holy  spirit,  a  good  conscience,  a 
pure  soul,  an  innocent  life  in  righteousness,  and 
genuine  faith."  Frank  was  no  Anabaptist,  inas- 
much as  he  was  indifferent  toward  baptism,  as 
toward  all  other  ceremonies.  He  was  disinclined 
to  join  the  sectarian  activities  of  the  Anabaptists. 
His  was  a  deep-seated  religious  nature  for  which  it 
sufficed  that  he  had  God  in  his  heart,  that  he  felt 
himself  to  be  a  member  of  the  invisible  congrega- 

208 


Swiss  Reformation 

tion  of  those  believers  who  among  all  peoples  seek 
God. 

Caspar  Schwenkfeld  was  also  an  opponent  of  the 
theological  tendencies  of  his  time.  He  was  con- 
demned because  he  laid  more  stress  upon  the  inner 
word  than  upon  the  written  word,  upon  the  Christ 
in  us  in  the  pious  spirit  more  than  upon  the  Christ 
for  us  and  the  merit  gained  through  him.  Small 
congregations  gathered  about  Schwenkfeld  and 
their  descendants  are  still  to  be  found  in  America. 

Hans  Denk  w^as  a  pupil  and  friend  of  Oeko- 
lampad,  a  man  whose  piety  and  theological  train- 
ing have  been  expressly  testified  to,  yet  he  was 
driven  from  city  to  city  as  an  enemy  of  Lutheran 
teaching  and  died  early.  He  denied  the  Lutheran 
doctrine  of  inherited  sin,  of  eternal  damnation,  on 
the  ground  that  God  is  love  which  could  save  and 
willed  to  save  all.  In  every  man,  there  is  a  spark 
of  this  divine  nature,  the  inner  Christ  —  a  spark 
which  could  be  kindled  into  a  flame  of  righteousness 
through  the  exemplar  of  the  historical  Savior.  In 
a  letter  to  Oekolampad  he  writes :  "  I  have  no 
care  for  any  other  result  than  that  many  join  in 
praising  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Master,  Christ, 
whether  they  be  circumcised  or  baptised  or  neither ; 
I  am  far  removed  from  those  who  wish  to  attach 
the  kingdom  of  God  too  strongly  to  ceremonies  and 
elements  of  this  world." 

The  Church  theologians  drove  such  men,  who 
209 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

were  far  from  any  fanaticism  themselves,  from  city 
to  city,  condemned  them  and  persecuted  them,  and 
thus  these  theologians  forced  the  Anabaptists  into 
fanatical  opposition;  naturally  their  religious  en- 
thusiasm allied  with  fantastic  dreams  of  an  earthly 
kingdom  of  Christ,  of  universal  liberty  and  equality, 
and  finally  with  revolutionary  lawlessness  and  deeds 
of  force,  led  to  the  wickedest  of  horrors  and  ex- 
cesses at  Münster.  It  is  gross  injustice  to  lay  such 
excesses  of  fanatics  at  the  door  of  all  dissidents. 
Men  like  Denk,  Schwenk f eld,  and  Frank  recog- 
nized more  clearly  and  more  logically  than  the 
Church  theologians  of  the  sixteenth  century  the 
Protestant  principle  of  the  immediate  alliance  of 
the  pious  spirit  to  God,  the  principle  of  the  contin- 
uous completion  of  the  revelation  of  the  divine 
spirit  in  the  human  soul,  the  principle  of  the  free 
moral  autonomy  of  Christian  personality.  Nat- 
urally such  men  were  far  ahead  of  their  time  and, 
therefore,  they  were  lonely  and  misunderstood,  as 
are  all  the  prophets  of  purer  ideals  who  rise  too 
far  above  their  age. 


210 


CHAPTER  XI 

CATHOLIC    COUNTER-REFORMATION 

The  reaction  of  the  Catholic  Church  against  the 
Reformation  movement  was  employed  partly  in 
resistance  to  Protestant  deviations  from  dogma 
through  a  decided  settlement  upon  the  opposing 
Catholic  dogma.  Thus,  for  the  great  part,  these 
received  their  first  definite  bounds  and  were  ele- 
vated to  the  position  of  dogmatic  laws  of  binding 
authority.  Thus  the  Catholic  principle  became 
narrower,  more  one-sided,  more  unfree  than  it  had 
ever  been  before.  On  the  other  hand,  the  reaction 
tended  to  do  away  with  the  grossest  disorders  and 
led  to  the  establishment  of  a  better  order  and  disci- 
pline, especially  in  the  education  of  the  clerics ;  thus 
it  tended  to  a  certain  purification  and  renewal  of  the 
Church  on  the  old  ground  of  Roman  authority. 
This  strict  formulation  and  inner  purification  of 
Catholicism  was  the  work  of  the  Council  of  Trent. 
At  the  same  time  the  Catholic  Church  acquired  a 
new  militant  host  in  the  Order  of  the  Jesuits,  which, 
by  a  more  clever  adjustment  to  new  circumstances, 
was  better  able  than  the  older  Orders  to  make  ef- 
fective opposition  to  Protestantism  and  to  raise  the 
fallen  power  of  the  papal  Church.    Finally,  we  must 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

here  consider  those  instruments  of  force, —  the  in- 
quisition, the  censorship  of  books,  and  the  pohtical 
regulations  for  the  suppression  and  extermination 
of  Protestantism  in  countries  under  Catholic  ruler- 
ship, —  out  of  which  there  developed,  in  the  second 
half  of  the  sixteenth  and  almost  the  whole  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  those  religious  wars  which  our 
task  does  not  require  us  to  describe  here. 

From  1 518,  there  was  a  demand  for  a  council  on 
all  sides,  but  the  Popes  purposely,  through  fear  of  a 
diminution  of  their  claims  to  power,  naturally  set 
these  demands  aside.  Finally  in  1545,  at  Trent, 
the  Council  met.  But  it  met  at  a  time  when  the  in- 
dependent formation  of  a  Protestant  Church  in  op- 
position to  the  Catholic  had  gone  on  so  far  and 
become  so  firm  that  a  reunion  was  no  longer  possi- 
ble. Neither  was  this  the  purpose  of  the  papal 
party,  which  from  the  beginning  formed  a  ma- 
jority of  the  gathering.  This  became  evident  at 
once  when  the  assembly  did  not  do  what  the  Em- 
peror wished,  namely,  occupy  itself  with  meas- 
ures for  Church  reform  first,  and  then  take  up 
the  disputed  rules  of  faith;  the  assembly  did  just 
the  reverse,  following  the  wish  of  the  Pope,  and 
began  with  the  disputed  questions,  settHng  upon 
doctrines  concerning  writ  and  tradition,  sin  and 
justification,  Church  and  sacrament,  deciding  these 
in  the  strictly  Catholic  sense.  Political  events 
led  to  a  long  interruption  of  the  synod,  and  when 
it  reassembled  in  1562  the  Protestants  were  no  long- 

212 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

er  inclined  to  take  any  part  in  it.  The  former  resolu- 
tions were  simply  sanctioned  again  and  the  restora- 
tion of  the  Church  begun.  Characteristically 
enough,  it  began  with  the  establishment  of  an  In- 
dex librorum  prohibit orum  —  the  catalogue  of  for- 
bidden books. 

The  Austrian  and  French  governments  demanded 
far-reaching  Church  reforms  at  that  time.  They 
demanded  the  permission  of  priestly  marriage,  of 
the  layman's  cup  at  the  communion,  of  the  language 
of  the  country  in  the  service,  and,  finally,  reform 
of  the  monasteries  and  limitation  of  the  papal 
power.  These  were  demands  made  not  only  by 
Catholic  governments,  but  also  by  many  of  the 
higher  clerics,  bishops  and  prelates,  who  either 
avowed  or  favored  them.  But  the  Roman  legates, 
with  the  Jesuit  Lainez  at  their  head,  sought  to  ac- 
complish their  purposes  by  the  divide  et  impera  pol- 
icy as  they  had  at  Constance  and  Basle.  They 
knew  how  to  win  the  princes  and  gain  over  the 
opposition  prelates  by  favors  and  one  by  one  make 
them  support  the  Roman  interests,  so  that  the  papal 
authority  might  be  firmly  grounded  and  become  en- 
tirely independent  of  all  temporal  control.  Lainez 
declared  that  Christ  had  commissioned  Saint  Peter, 
"  Feed  my  sheep."  But  sheep  are  unreasonable  an- 
imals and  therefore  they  are  not  entitled  to  any 
share  in  the  government.  He  says  further,  the 
Church  was  founded  by  the  God-man  Christ  him- 
self,  a  purely   divine   institution   of   unconditional 

213 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

authority.  Temporal  power  originates  with  the 
peoples,  therefore  its  nature  is  human  and  condi- 
tioned. These  are  the  fundamental  thoughts  which 
form,  to  this  day,  the  basis  of  the  entire  thinking 
of  Catholicism  and  we  ought  to  make  note  of  that. 
These  views  of  the  Romans  were  successful  and 
the  new  foundation  of  the  unlimited  authority  of 
the  Pope  was  the  soul  of  all  the  decisions  of  the 
Council  of  Trent.  That  which  was  done  for  re- 
form remained  far  behind  even  those  demands  which 
had  formerly  been  raised  by  Catholics  generally,  and 
it  was  still  further  limited  by  the  prerogative  of  pa- 
pal sanction.  However,  it  must  be  conceded  that  the 
reform  decrees  had  this  effect:  a  firm  ecclesiastical 
order  and  discipline  were  introduced ;  care  was  had 
for  the  education  of  preachers  in  priest  seminaries, 
and  the  mendicant  monks  were  limited  to  the 
churches  of  their  own  Order.  Regular  provincial 
synods  of  the  clerics  were  estabHshed;  the  entire 
Church  custom,  as  well  as  the  Catholic  faith  in 
general,  was  regulated  by  strict  and  generally  bind- 
ing rule  intended  to  serve  as  a  firm  dike  against  all 
innovation.  Therewith  all  movements  of  a  freer 
Protestant  spirit,  as  they  had,  in  former  days,  ap- 
peared now  and  again  in  the  old  and  mediaeval 
Church,  were  cut  off  from  the  Catholic  Church  after 
Trent.  Thus,  by  the  Reformation,  as  a  kind  of 
secondary  effect  thereof,  the  Catholic  Church  be- 
came narrower  and  less  free  than  it  had  ever  been 
before  the  Reformation.     What  the  Church  lost  in 

214 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

extent  of  outer  territory,  she  supplanted  by  a  more 
rigid  centralization  of  the  power  which  culmi- 
nated in  the  papal  apex. 

In  the  new  Order  of  the  Jesuits  this  power  found 
at  the  same  time  an  extremely  effective  instrument 
of  its  temporal  and  ecclesiastical  activity.  Ignatius 
of  Loyola,  the  founder  of  this  order,  was  born  in 
1491.  He  was  originally  a  Spanish  knight  filled 
with  the  thirst  for  deeds,  romantic  love,  a  devotion 
to  the  Church.  In  the  war  with  the  French  he  had 
been  wounded  and  rendered  unfit  for  service.  He 
exchanged  his  temporal  knighthood  for  a  spiritual 
knighthood,  gave  away  all  his  possessions  and 
begged  his  way  to  Jerusalem  where  he  acted  the 
part  of  a  missionary  so  awkwardly  that  he  was 
sent  home  again.  By  his  castigations  and  inflam- 
matory preaching,  he  caused  himself  to  be  suspected 
of  heresy  at  home.  Twice  he  was  arrested  and 
released  upon  the  promise  that  he  would  immedi- 
ately take  up  regular  theological  studies.  This  he 
did  at  the  Universities  of  Salamanca  and  Paris.  At 
the  latter  place  he  won  over  to  his  ideas  six  en- 
thusiastic converts,  among  them  Lainez  and  Xavier. 
They  united  to  form  a  spiritual  knighthood  in  the 
service  of  Jesus  and  the  Most  Holy  Virgin.  Be- 
fore all  things,  they  vowed  that  they  would  prac- 
tise their  knighthood  in  missions  to  the  heathen 
wherever  the  Pope  desired  to  send  them  and  in 
whatever  fashion  he  desired  to  use  them.  In  1540, 
Pope  Paul  III  confirmed  the  new  Order.     That  is 

215 


The  Development  of  Christianity; 

the  year  of  the  foundation  of  this  celebrated  Order. 
Ignatius  composed  the  spiritual  exercises  for  his 
disciples,  but  these  show  less  spirit  and  more  fanat- 
icism and  tenacious  will.  Lainez,  a  man  of  un- 
doubtedly keen  understanding  and  genuine  dom- 
inating spirit  became  the  organizer  of  the  Order. 
It  was  he  who  stamped  upon  the  Order  that  mili- 
tary organization  to  which  it  owes  its  success.  The 
Professij  or  members  of  the  most  intimate  circle 
of  the  Order,  took  upon  themselves  not  only  the 
three  monastic  vows,  but  promised  also  uncondi- 
tional obedience  to  the  Pope.  Below  them  were  the 
Scholastici,  and  the  third,  the  widest  circle,  the  "  af- 
filiated of  minor  observance,'*  who  remained  in 
their  worldly  career  and  merely  obligated  them- 
selves to  obey  their  superiors.  They  were  like  the 
Tertiaries  of  the  Franciscans  —  an  institution 
which  in  that  case  had  proved  to  be  very  useful. 
At  the  head  of  each  province  there  was  a  Provin- 
cial and  by  them  the  General  of  the  Order  was 
elected.  He  possessed  dictatorial  power  limited 
only  by  the  six  Admonitors  who  were  his  adju- 
tants and  could  make  complaint  against  him  at  the 
general  meeting.  Decision  in  matters  of  law-giving 
and  of  discipline  rested  finally  with  the  general 
meeting.  Unconditional  obedience  nominally  was 
yielded  to  the  Pope,  actually  it  was  yielded  to  the 
General  of  the  Order  who  was  even  designated 
"the  vicar  of  Christ."  The  whole  refined  disci- 
pline and  asceticism  of  the  Jesuits  looked  toward 

216 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

the  training  of  men  to  such  an  obedience  that  they 
would  suffer  themselves  to  be  used  by  their  supe- 
riors as  instruments  without  will,  "  like  cadavers." 
Every  natural  tie  of  blood  relationship  or  friend- 
ship, of  rank  or  fatherland,  was  loosed  for  the  mem- 
bers and  these  were  rooted  out  of  their  souls  in 
favor  of  an  exclusive  union  with  and  submission 
to  the  Order  and  its  object  of  world-rulership. 
With  praiseworthy  keenness  and  energy  the  Order 
served  this  purpose  of  subjecting  human  society  to 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  to  the  Roman  increase  of 
power.  An  especial  means  was  the  care,  educa- 
tion, and  direction  of  youth,  especially  in  the  high- 
er ranks.  While  the  older  Orders  (excepting  the 
Benedictine)  in  the  main  had  only  crude  and  ig- 
norant monks,  the  Jesuits  laid  very  great  value 
upon  culture  and  science  from  the  beginning.  The 
universities  under  their  direction  were  recognized 
far  and  wide.  They  taught  not  only  elegant  Latin 
but  also  the  exact  sciences,  physics,  and  mathemat- 
ics; even  philosophy  and  dialectics  were  taken  into 
their  curriculum  (they  were  the  first  to  take  these 
in).  Naturally  this  was  subject  to  the  immovable 
presupposition  of  the  authority  of  Church  tradition 
which  would  not  admit  of  independent  science  seek- 
ing truth  for  its  own  sake.  For  this  reason,  while 
many  thorough  mediocrities  went  forth  from  the 
Jesuit  Order,  they  can  show  no  man  of  genius  in 
research,  no  innovating  discoverer  in  any  of  the 
fields  of  knowledge.     The  main  thing  was  the  drill 

217 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

in  instruction,  the  development  of  a  formal  dialectic 
cleverness  in  disputation  and  a  brilliant  rhetoric  for 
the  purpose  of  defending  the  Church  doctrine  and 
of  opposing  the  heretics  either  in  a  battle  of  words 
or  by  means  of  fascinating  pulpit  oratory.  Philos- 
ophy was  pursued  only  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
old  Scholasticism ;  the  introduction  of  new  questions 
and  the  battle  over  principles  were  forbidden. 
After  that  what  does  philosophy  mean?  If  one 
cannot  talk  about  principles,  I  think  it  best  that 
philosophy  be  dropped.  Jesuit  ethics  is  entirely 
controlled  by  its  highest  object,  nominally  the  glori- 
fication of  God,  actually  the  glorification  of  the 
Church  or,  to  be  more  exact,  of  their  own  General. 
Whether  the  Jesuits  literally  enunciated  the  prin- 
ciple "  the  end  justifies  the  means,"  or  whether  they 
did  not  is  a  question  about  which  there  has  been 
much  dispute  but  which  has  not  nearly  as  great  an 
importance  as  has  been  attributed  to  it.  This  sen- 
tence in  itself  is  entirely  unprejudicial  and  I  should 
not  know  how  else  one  could  give  value  to  actions 
other  than  according  to  the  final  purpose  which  they 
are  to  serve.  If  the  object  is  really  holy  and  un- 
conditionally obligatory,  then  the  necessary  means 
thereto  are  naturally  justified  and  part  of  duty. 
There  is  no  question  about  this.  The  mistake  of 
Jesuit  ethics  in  no  wise  lies  in  that  formal  principle, 
that  the  object  conditions  the  moral  value  of  the 
means,  but  it  consists  in  the  false  view  of  the  su- 
preme object.     According  to  our  Protestant  convic- 

218 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

tion,  which  may  be  considered  identical  with  tKe 
general  human  conviction,  the  supreme  object  may 
consist  only  in  the  fulfilment  of  the  will  of  God  in 
some  universal  human  realm  of  the  good,  in  some 
moral  world  order  whose  object  is  the  perfection 
of  man.  In  the  place  of  this  unconditional  final 
object,  the  Jesuits  set  up  the  very  conditioned  rela- 
tive purpose  of  the  glorification  of  the  Church,  more 
exactly  speaking  the  very  questionable  one  of  the 
ruler  ship  of  the  Roman  Church  which,  even  in  its 
very  best  times  in  the  later  mediaeval  ages,  never 
coincided  with  the  all-embracing  thought  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Since  the  Reformation,  the  Ro- 
man papal  Church  had  been  rather  a  hindrance  than 
an  aid  to  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth.  If  this  limited,  doubtful  purpose,  the  ruler- 
ship  of  the  Church,  is  elevated  to  the  highest  moral 
purpose  and  standard  of  value,  then  the  result  is 
indeed  a  denial  of  the  true  moral  world  order  and 
can  end  only  in  the  worst  consequences  possible  for 
individual  moral  action.  It  cannot  be  denied  that 
the  Order  of  the  Jesuits  did  carry  over  into  the 
Church  the  consciencelessness  of  Machiavellian 
policy.  It  did  call  the  most  immoral  and  most 
criminal  acts  good  if  they  did  but  seem  useful  for 
the  Churchly  striving  for  rulership.  In  order  to 
justify  this  lax  morahty  to  moral  consciousness  the 
Jesuit  teachers  thought  out  a  refined  system  of 
sophistical  dialectics,  calculated  solely  to  choke  the 
unprejudiced  judgment  of  conscience  by  sophistical 

219 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

arguments  and  argue  away  the  difference  between 
good  and  evil.  Thus,  for  example,  the  Jesuits  ex- 
plained the  reservatio  mentalis  —  the  reservation  by 
which  one  says  something  and  means  it  in  a  differ- 
ent sense  than  that  which  the  hearer  must  under- 
stand. This  reservatio  mentalis  the  Jesuits  them- 
selves expressly  declare  permissible  in  statements 
made  under  oath  to  the  authorities.  Especially  the 
principle  of  ''  probabilism,"  according  to  which  the 
judgment  of  any  act  depends  entirely  upon  whether 
one  can  offer  a  probable  ground  therefor,  served  as 
a  justification  of  their  morals.  As  such  probable 
ground  it  is  sufficient  to  offer  the  authority  of  any 
teacher  who  under  certain  circumstances  declares 
a  certain  act  permissible.  And  where  the  authori- 
ties contradict  each  other,  it  is  permissible  to  follow 
the  more  useful  opinion  if  it  have  any  kind  of  a 
seeming  basis  in  its  favor.  For  example,  Escovar, 
the  Jesuit  teacher  of  ethics,  gathered  together  in 
his  casuistry  for  father  confessors  various  most 
doubtful  questions  and  decisions  and  of  these  I 
shall  present  a  few : 

'*  May  I  kill  him  who  purposes  to  bring  a  charge 
against  me  which  threatens  to  bring  me  great  hurt, 
even  if  that  charge  be  true?"  Answer:  "In  the 
affirmative  on  probable  grounds !  "  "  May  I  kill 
him  who  has  injured  my  honor  in  that  he  has  cuffed 
or  wiiipped  me?"  Answer:  '*  The  noble  may. 
The  citizen  may  not  because  his  honor  is  not  so 
nice!" 

220 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

According  to  Jesuit  ethics  it  is  deadly  sin  only 
when  an  action  is  performed  with  complete  knowl- 
edge of  all  evil  consequences  according  to  their 
whole  nature,  and  with  a  will  governed  in  no  wise 
by  passion.  Inasmuch  as  these  two  are  never  en- 
tirely present,  there  are  in  fact  no  sins  which  are 
deadly  sins  but  only  sins  of  smaller  blame,  aton- 
able  through  penitences.  The  Jesuits,  therefore, 
were  extremely  lenient  and  most  sought,  therefore, 
as  father  confessors.  They  were  praised  because 
they  knew  how  to  make  the  yoke  of  Christ  mild  and 
easy,  for  with  them,  so  the  saying  went,  a  sin  was 
more  quickly  forgiven  than  committed.  Thus  did 
they  murder  the  conscience  of  men  in  order  to  place 
themselves  in  its  stead. 

Naturally  we  must  not  fail  to  note  that  what 
they  did,  at  bottom,  was  to  draw  the  very  last  con- 
sequence of  the  whole  Catholic  standpoint  of 
authority,  which  makes  the  good  and  the  true  a 
Church  tradition  and  command  on  the  basis  of  a 
positive  revelation,  instead  of  an  autonomous  de- 
mand of  conscience  based  on  one's  inner  self,  as 
Protestantism  had  done  from  the  beginning  in  prin- 
ciple, at  least,  even  though  it  did  not  carry  out  this 
thought  logically  to  the  end.  This  partial  nature 
of  ecclesiastical  Protestantism,  its  being  caught 
in  old  dogma,  its  stiffening  up  in  disputes  about 
dogmas  —  these  things  made  the  work  of  the 
Jesuits  in  the  counter-reformation  far  easier  than 
it  otherwise  would  have  been.     It  was  a  repetition 

221 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  that  age-old  experience,  testified  to  even  in  the. 
Gospels,  that  the  children  of  the  world  are  wiser 
than  the  children  of  light.  While  the  Lutheran 
theologians  were  quarreling  in  honest  but  blind 
zeal  over  their  fruitless  dogmatic  theories,  the 
Jesuits  were  the  smart  and  adroit  men  of  the  world, 
who  knew  how  to  flatter  their  way  into  the  courts 
as  political  counselors,  and  to  recommend  them- 
selves to  cultured  circles  through  the  progressive 
methods  employed  in  teaching  in  their  schools,  and 
to  fascinate  the  masses  by  their  popular  oratory, 
by  the  brilliance  of  Church  splendor,  and  by  their 
propagation  of  every  superstition.  They  under- 
stood human  nature  and  they  leaned  on  its  weakest 
side.  That  is  always  a  policy  which  is  certain  of 
success  in  the  world.  In  this  fashion  it  can  be 
easily  understood  why  it  is  that  they  so  often  suc- 
ceeded in  hemming  the  progress  of  the  Reformation 
and  partially  winning  back  the  ground  already  lost. 
Especially  was  this  the  case  in  South  Germany,  in 
Austria,  in  Switzerland,  and  in  the  Rhine  coun- 
tries. In  the  latter,  Canisius  the  Jesuit  developed 
a  most  fruitful  and  in  part  most  successful  activity 
as  the  author  of  Catholic  catechisms  and  as  an 
itinerant  preacher.  It  was  so  successful  an  activity 
that  his  followers  compared  him  with  Boniface, 
the  apostle  of  the  Germans,  and  he  was  like  him, 
a  narrow  spirit,  a  Scholastic  believer  in  authority, 
entirely  bent  upon  the  subjection  of  the  German 
people  under  the  Roman  yoke. 

222 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

Far  greater  opposition  than  in  Germany,  where 
the  Cathohc  courts  in  every  way  favored  them, 
the  Jesuits  met  from  the  beginning  in  France.  It 
was  the  strong  French  national  feehng,  ever  their 
praiseworthy  characteristic,  represented  by  the  par- 
Hament  of  Paris,  which  opposed  the  Jesuit  activity 
in  liveliest  fashion.  They  were  recognized  as  a 
danger  to  the  Gallic  Church;  as  early  as  1554,  the 
scholars  of  the  Sorbonne  recognized  the  mischiev- 
ous character  of  the  Jesuit  Order,  as  was  evidenced 
more  and  more  clearly  as  time  went  on.  Finally, 
when  Chastel,  a  pupil  of  the  Jesuits,  made  a  mur- 
derous attack  on  King  Henry  IV,  the  parliament 
decided  to  exile  the  Jesuits  because  they  led  the 
youth  astray,  because  they  disturbed  the  public 
peace,  because  they  were  enemies  of  the  State  and 
the  King.  Unfortunately,  Henry  IV  was  not 
courageous  enough  to  carry  out  the  parliamentary 
resolution.  That  was  a  fatal  weakness  for  him. 
A  few  years  later,  in  16 10,  he  fell  by  the  murder- 
ous hand  of  Ravaillac.  In  the  same  year,  the 
Jesuits  were  driven  out  of  England  by  James  I, 
and  also  out  of  the  Netherlands,  but  by  their  ser- 
pent-like wisdom  and  perfect  organization  they 
were  nevertheless  able  to  increase  their  power  and 
their  possessions  until  the  peoples  were  no  longer 
able  to  bear  them.  At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  ban  fell  upon  them  from  Rome  itself. 
Later,  in  the  period  of  the  Restoration,  the  re- 
actionary  possessors   of   power   used    them,    with 

22^ 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

much  other  old  plunder,  as  a  frightful  rod  of  cor- 
rection on  the  backs  of  the  peoples  groaning  for 
freedom.  When  one  remembers  that  the  Jesuits 
especially,  by  their  intrigues,  conjured  up  the 
unspeakable  misfortune  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War 
over  our  own  fatherland,  then  one  certainly  must 
think  that  we  Germans  have  every  urgent  reason 
to  hold  these  dangerous  enemies  at  arm's  length ! 

To  the  spiritual  weapons  of  the  Catholic  counter- 
reformation  weapons  of  force  were  added  by  Catho- 
lic governments  —  preeminently  the  inquisition  and 
the  censorship  of  books.  In  the  same  year  in  which 
the  Jesuit  Order  received  its  papal  sanction,  the 
Spanish  Inquisition  was  planted  on  Italian  soil. 
The  preparation  of  this  institution  was  committed 
to  Cardinal  Caraffa.  According  to  the  instruction 
of  1542,  the  court  of  faith  was  not  to  wait  until  the 
charge  was  proved  against  the  accused,  but  upon 
the  least  suspicion  he  was  to  be  punished  to  the 
extreme,  and  it  was  not  to  lower  itself  by  any 
regard  for  rank  or  high  protection  or  by  any  false 
patience.  Thereupon  the  inquisition  in  Italy  and 
Spain  acted  with  most  fearful  severity;  by  exile, 
prison,  funeral  pyre,  they  rooted  out  all  heresy 
from  Spain  and  Italy  in  a  few  years.  In  Spain, 
they  killed  not  only  religious  but  also  political  free- 
dom to  the  root ;  they  broke  the  spirit  of  the  people, 
so  that  this  nation,  once  so  bold  and  venturesome, 
sank  into  a  lethargy  and  political  weakness  which 
has  been  growing  more  profound  ever  since.     In 

224 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

the  Netherlands  it  was  the  attempt  to  introduce  the 
inquisition  which  gave  the  impulse  to  revolution 
and  resulted  in  the  freedom  from  the  Spanish  yoke. 
Religious  and  political  freedom  was  the  soil  out  of 
which  grew  the  beautiful  flower  of  Dutch  art  and 
science,  the  rise  of  her  commerce  and  her  industry, 
the  wealth  and  welfare  of  the  country.  Thus  beau- 
tifully was  the  Gospel  word  exemplified  in  the  free- 
dom-loving, courageous  Netherlands :  "  Seek  ye 
first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and 
all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 

In  contrast,  let  me  mention  several  sad  examples 
of  what  happened  to  science  in  Spain  and  Italy. 
When  Luis  de  Leon,  the  Augustine  monk  of  Sal- 
amanca, pronounced  the  Hebrew  text  of  the  Old 
Testament  to  be  higher  than  the  Vulgate  and  ex- 
plained the  Song  of  Songs  to  be  a  poem  of  bridal 
love  (which  it  is  held  to  be  to-day,  generally)  and 
when  he  translated  it  into  Castilian,  he  paid  for  his 
temerity  with  five  years  in  prison.  In  Italy,  Gior- 
dano Bruno,  the  Dominican,  rendered  himself  under 
suspicion  of  heresy  by  doubts  concerning  the  dogma 
of  transubstantiation,  and  he  was  compelled  to 
flee.  After  irregular  wanderings  through  France, 
England  and  Germany,  he  returned  to  Italy  in  1592. 
He  was  arrested  in  Venice  and  handed  over  to 
Rome.  There  he  was  brought  to  trial  because  of 
his  remarkable  natural  philosophy,  in  which  lay  the 
seeds  of  the  philosophic  systems  of  Spinoza  and 
Leibnitz,  and  the  trial  ended  in  1600  by  a  funeral 

225 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

pyre  in  the  flower  market,  on  which  Bruno  was 
burned.  On  the  three  hundreth  anniversary  of  that 
memorable  day,  the  city  of  Rome  set  a  monument 
to  him  on  the  spot  where  he  died,  as  testimony  that, 
despite  fire  and  sword,  the  world  does  move  and 
the  spirit  cannot  be  exiled!  Galileo,  professor  at 
Pisa  and  Padua,  has  become  world  famous  by  his 
epoch-making  discoveries  in  the  realms  of  physics 
and  astronomy.  Because  of  his  defense  of  the 
Copernican  teaching  of  the  movement  of  the  earth 
about  the  sun,  he  was  called  to  Rome,  cast  into 
prison  by  the  Inquisition,  and  by  threats  of  torture 
forced  to  take  back  his  statements.  The  poor 
seventy-year-old  man  submitted,  and  who  shall  con- 
demn him  for  so  doing?  Nevertheless,  they  put 
him  under  strict  supervision  and  forced  him  to  re- 
main silent  until  his  death  in  1642.  The  year  of  the 
death  of  the  great  physicist  and  astronomer,  Galileo, 
was  the  birth  year  of  the  still  greater  astronomer, 
Newton.  Thus  does  the  torch  of  science  pass 
from  one  hand  to  another  through  the  centuries,  but 
it  is  only  in  Protestant  countries  that  its  light  can 
spread  far  and  free.  Until  1820,  Galileo's  teaching 
was  condemned  by  the  Church  in  Italy.  In  Toul- 
ouse, Vanini  the  learned  physician  was  arrested 
on  the  charge  of  atheism  and,  despite  his  deposition 
that  every  blade  of  grass  was  a  proof  of  God's  exist- 
ence, he  was  burned  in  1619  for  atheism  and 
witchcraft. 

But  with  even  greater  power  than  by  the  funeral 
226 


Catholic  Counter-Reformation 

pyre,  the  counter-reformation  worked  with  the  cen- 
sorship of  books,  which  not  only  breaks  the  body 
but  even  the  spirit.  Paul  IV  instituted  the  censor- 
ship of  books  while  Cardinal  Caraffa  was  in  Italy. 
No  book,  whether  old  or  new,  might  be  printed  or 
sold  without  permission  of  the  Pope.  In  the  year 
1559,  Erasmus's  edition  of  the  New  Testament, 
which  is  printed  in  the  front  of  the  Thanksgiving 
Breva  of  Louis  X,  was  put  on  the  Index.  Not  only 
poets,  such  as  Petrarch  and  Boccaccio  (and  with 
him  it  is  possible  to  understand  it),  but  even  Church 
Fathers,  such  as  Athanasius  and  Augustine,  though 
they  were  not  put  on  the  index  of  forbidden  books, 
were  put  among  the  books  needing  purification  and 
correction.  So,  too,  the  learned  historical  work  of 
Paolo  Sarpi,  an  important  scientific  work  in  which 
the  history  of  the  Council  of  Trent  is  all  too 
honestly  described,  at  least  more  honestly  than  the 
Inquisition  wished  —  this  splendid  book  was  placed 
upon  the  Index  and  the  author  feared  for  his  life. 
Certainly  the  censorship  of  books  was  a  fearful 
weapon,  and  it  is  alone  sufficient  to  explain  why 
science  and  spiritual  progress  could  make  no  head- 
way in  those  countries  which  were  under  Catholic 
rule.  To-day  censorship  is  another  matter.  To- 
day it  is  merely  a  blunted  weapon,  and  in  fact  the 
weapon  is  so  blunt  that  the  best  possible  advertise- 
ment for  any  book  is  to  have  it  put  on  the  Index. 


337 


CHAPTER  XII 

PROTESTANT   SECTS 

Between  the  old  Church  Protestantism  of  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  and  the  new 
Protestantism,  which  begins  with  the  Enhghten- 
ment  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Protestant  sects 
stand,  both  as  to  time  and  as  to  content ;  they  are  the 
sects  which  in  part  were  produced  by  the  period  of 
the  Reformation  and  in  part  were  formed  later  as 
a  reaction  against  the  dogmatic  rigor  and  religious 
narrowness  of  the  official  Church. 

Out  of  the  Reformation  period  came  the  Ana- 
baptists and  the  anti-trinitarians.  In  the  beginning 
they  were  closely  allied,  being  mainly  represented  by 
the  same  men.  Later,  however,  they  divided  in 
such  fashion  that  the  Baptists  confined  themselves 
to  a  practical  opposition  to  the  popular  Church  while 
the  anti-trinitarians  limited  themselves  to  a  theoreti- 
cal opposition  to  Church  dogma.  Among  the  Ana- 
baptists there  had  always  been  a  moderate  section 
which  did  not  approve  of  the  revolutionary  fanati- 
cism which,  as  is  known,  culminated  in  the  horrors 
of  Münster,  a  moderate  section  whose  only  desire 
was  to  achieve  a  practical  Christianity  in  the  sense 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.     "  The  baplismally 

228 


Protestant  Sects 

inclined,"  as  they  called  themselves,  were  organized 
by  Menno  Simons,  a  Lovvlander,  who  was  at  first  a 
Catholic  priest,  but  who,  through  study  of  Holy 
Writ  and  books  of  the  Reformation  became  a 
Baptist.  He  founded  numerous  Baptist  congrega- 
tions in  North  Germany  and  gave  them  such  a  con- 
stitution as  harmonized  with  the  civic  order  of  soci- 
ety. In  1 561,  Menno  died  in  Holstein.  In  the 
Netherlands  the  Baptists  were  tolerated.  Later 
too,  in  Germany  and  England,  and  to-day  they  are 
among  the  largest  Church  communities  in  America. 
The  characteristic  of  the  Mennonites  is  a  striving 
toward  simple  Biblical  Christianity  which  they  seek 
to  realize  through  a  purely  Christian  congrega- 
tional life.  But  as  to  Church  dogma,  outside  of 
Scripture,  they  are  indifferent.  They  rejected  the 
baptism  of  children  as  contrary  to  Scripture,  in- 
jurious and  superstitious.  Thus,  also,  they  rejected 
the  oath,  the  use  of  arms,  and  divorce.  In  their 
Confession  of  Faith  of  1580,  they  declared  the  civil 
government  to  be  necessary  for  the  present  world 
order,  but  foreign  to  the  real  or  true  kingdom  of 
Christ.  Hence  the  congregation  of  the  reborn 
honor  civil  superiors  by  a  passive  obedience,  but 
they  themselves  take  no  active  part  in  office-holding. 
It  is  the  same  precept  as  in  the  primitive  Christian 
congregation,  and  as  Tolstoi  lays  it  down  to-day  — 
altogether  he  is  probably  the  only  Christian  to-day 
who  is  really  in  earnest  with  the  morals  of  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount. 

229 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

The  anti-trinitarians  and  the  Unitarians  differ 
from  the  Dissidents,  spoken  of  in  a  previous  lecture, 
by  a  criticism  of  Church  dogma  based  on  the  under- 
standing. They  were  mainly  ItaHan  Protestants 
who  had  sought  and  found  refuge  in  Switzerland. 
The  best  known  among  them  is  Laelius  Socinus,  a 
man  of  much  spirit  and  fine  culture,  who  made  the 
personal  acquaintances  of  Swiss  and  German  re- 
formers during  his  many  journeys.  And  despite  his 
many  dogmatic  doubts  and  hesitations,  he  main- 
tained a  friendly  correspondence  with  them.  Alto- 
gether he  was  a  man  of  such  noble  and  charming 
character  that  he  won  respect  everywhere.  His 
early  death  in  1562  was  fortunate  for  him,  in  so  far, 
at  least,  as  it  saved  him  from  the  sad  fate  of  his  col- 
leagues who  were  soon  after  persecuted  in  Switzer- 
land, in  Germany  and  in  the  Low  Countries.  They 
fled  to  Poland  and  founded  a  congregation  there. 
Faustus  Socinus,  the  nephew  of  Laelius,  collated 
their  doctrine  in  the  so-called  Catechism  of  Rakau. 
In  many  ways  it  is  an  interesting  doctrine  on  account 
of  its  deviations  from  Church  forms,  which  are 
both  original  and  one-sided.  It  was  a  moralistic 
rationalism  on  a  supernatural  basis.  Their  strength 
lay  in  a  reasoning  criticism  of  Church  dogma,  their 
weakness  was  the  lack  of  all  religious  and  philo- 
sophic depth.  The  main  viewpoint  of  their  criticism 
is  the  rejection  of  the  Trinity  on  the  ground  that 
the  three  Persons  manifestly  contradict  the  unity 
of  Divine  Being.     Further,  they  were  the  opponents 

230 


Protestant  Sects 

of  the  God-manhood  of  Christ,  the  doctrine  of  the 
double  nature,  because  the  two  natures,  the  divine 
and  the  human,  cannot  be  present  in  one  person. 
They  were  particularly  strong  in  their  criticism  of 
the  Church  doctrine  of  atonement.  The  vicarious 
satisfaction  in  the  death  of  Christ,  so  the  Socinians 
said,  contradicts  the  divine  grace  which  forgives  of 
itself,  as  well  as  judges,  inasmuch  as  moral  guilt  is 
not  transferable  and  the  innocent  cannot  possibly 
atone  for  the  guilty ;  and,  further,  the  physical  death 
of  one  Jesus  Christ  cannot  be  an  adequate  atone- 
ment for  the  eternal  death  of  all  sinful  men.  Alen 
in  general  have  no  need  of  atonement,  for  God  is 
love  and  grace  from  the  beginning  and  there  never 
did  rest  on  mankind  any  damning  guilt.  That  is  a 
far-reaching  criticism  of  Church  dogma  in  all  its 
main  points.  If  w^e  wish  to  be  honest  we  must  con- 
cede that  this  criticism,  with  its  dissection  of  Church 
dogma  by  reason,  is  correct  and  has  not  been  an- 
swered to  this  day,  in  fact  it  cannot  be  answered ! 

While  the  Socinians  were  right  in  this  negation 
of  the  Church  form  of  faith,  it  must  be  said  that 
their  own  way  of  believing  was  problematical,  even 
fantastic  and  mythological.  The  Socinians  taught 
that  originally  Christ  was  simply  a  man  who  dif- 
fered from  other  men  by  his  supernatural  concep- 
tion; then,  before  entering  upon  his  office  as  teacher, 
he  was  bodily  removed  to  heaven  in  order  to  get  a 
course  of  instruction  personally  from  God  concern- 
ing  the   divine    will,    so    that   he   might    proclaim 

231 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

authentically,  as  a  proper  teacher  of  men,  the  will 
of  God.  As  a  reward  of  his  virtue  and  his 
martyrdom,  God  raised  him  again  bodily  from  the 
dead  and  lifted  him  to  heaven.  Then  God  confided 
to  him  the  rulership  over  the  whole  world,  nature 
and  history  —  and  this  all  to  the  man  Jesus.  A 
man  who  omnipotently  governs  the  entire  course  of 
the  world  in  nature  and  history,  that  is  the  purest 
kind  of  myth, —  not  one  jot  less  unthinkable  than 
the  whole  Church  mythology,  except  that  it  dif- 
fers from  the  latter  by  its  entire  lack  of  religious 
and  philosophical  content  of  ideas.  On  this  myth 
of  the  deification  of  the  man  Jesus  rests  the  entire 
Socinian  dogma  of  salvation.  The  Christian  be- 
lief consists  in  the  knowledge  of  and  action  accord- 
ing to  the  divine  laws  as  revealed  by  Christ,  and  in 
the  hope  of  that  immortality  prophesied  by  Christ. 
The  source  of  our  knowledge  of  both  command  and 
prophecy  is  exclusively  Holy  Writ.  The  Socinians 
do  not  recognize  any  such  thing  as  a  natural  knowl- 
edge of  God  through  reason.  By  what  means  do  we 
know  the  truth  of  Scripture?  —  This  is  the  saddest 
part  of  their  doctrine. —  By  the  miracle  stories  of 
the  Gospels,  which  are  accepted  as  real  history.  On 
the  basis  of  these  miracle  stories,  we  are  to  accept 
all  the  rest  as  a  positive  proclamation  of  a  world 
beyond,  and  to  hold  it  to  be  true  without  any  inner 
knowledge  of  this  truth.  You  see  Socinianism  is 
the  most  wonderful  mixture  of  contradictory  stand- 
points.    It  is  easily  to  be  understood  that  such  a 

232 


Protestant  Sects 

mixture  of  flat  moralism  and  fantastic,  supernatural- 
istic  mythology  was  so  estranging  and  repulsive  to 
both  Protestant  and  Catholic  Church  theologians, 
that  they  would  not  recognize  the  Socinians  as 
Christians. 

There  are  two  reasons  for  this.  First,  they  felt 
naturally  the  religious  emptiness  and  flatness  of 
this  rationalistic,  moralistic,  watered  Christianity; 
and  second,  they  felt  too,  perhaps  half  uncon- 
sciously, the  importance  of  this  criticism  of  Church 
dogma,  the  strength  of  the  opposition  reasoning 
which  was  here  urged  by  a  keen,  one-sided  under- 
standing against  the  form  of  Church  dogma  — 
criticism  which  they  could  not  rob  of  its  strength  in 
any  way  by  scientific  proof.  Both  of  these  things 
must  be  thought  of  in  order  to  understand  the 
thoroughly  inhospitable  attitude  of  all  Christianity 
toward  the  Socinians.  For  historical  consideration 
the  importance  of  Socinianism  consists  in  this,  that 
it  represents  the  logical  conscience  of  Protestantism, 
that,  with  equal  strength  and  one-sidedness,  it  em- 
phasizes the  protest  of  the  reasoning,  thinking  spirit, 
(never  rightly  recognized  by  official  theology) 
against  the  irrationality  of  traditional  dogma. 
Therewith  it  became  the  predecessor  of  Enlighten- 
ment and  of  the  New  Protestantism  of  the  eight- 
eenth century.  When,  in  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  the  Socinians  were  driven  out  of 
Poland  by  the  counter-reformation  of  the  Church, 
they  fled  to  Siebenbuergen,  where  they  had  taken 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

firm  root  from  the  beginning,  and,  as  far  as  I  know, 
single  congregations  exist  to  this  day.  They  then 
found  refuge  in  Prussian  cities  under  the  tolerance 
of  the  great  Kurfürst  Friedrich  Wilhelm.  Later 
they  merged  with  the  Arminians  in  the  Republic  of 
the  Netherlands.  There  and  in  Germany  the  rise  of 
Enlightenment  put  an  end  to  them.  Unitarian  con- 
gregations have  maintained  themselves  in  England 
and  in  America,  but  without  any  direct  connection 
with  the  old  Socinians. 

A  middle  position  between  Soclnianism  and  ex- 
treme Calvinism  was  taken  by  Arminianism  which, 
although  condemned  by  the  Synod  at  Dordrecht 
in  1 6 18-19,  was  able  to  maintain  its  existence.  By 
the  aid  of  important  scholars  such  as  Episcopus, 
Limborg,  and  Hugo  Grotius,  it  succeeded  in  exercis- 
ing an  influence  toward  the  amelioration  of  Calvin- 
istic  orthodoxy.  Arminianism  is  a  Biblical  super- 
naturalism  which  concedes  to  reason  in  the  exegesis 
of  Scripture  far  more  validity  than  the  orthodox 
Protestantism  of  either  confession  ever  had  done ; 
yet  it  never  went  so  far  in  its  rationalization  as  did 
Socinianism.  The  deviations  of  the  Arminians 
from  orthodox  Protestantism  relate  mainly  to  the 
dogmas  concerning  predestination,  atonement,  and 
the  inspiration  of  Holy  Writ.  The  Arminians 
taught  that  human  freedom,  not  lost  through  sin, 
worked  together  with  grace,  that  grace  did  not  work 
alone  and  was  not  invincible,  as  Calvin  declared. 
They    opined    that    divine    predetermination    was 

234 


Protestant  Sects 

simply  a  foreknowledge  of  free  human  actions. 
Further,  they  explained  the  death  of  Christ  not  as  a 
vicarious  means  of  atoning  for  the  injured  honor  of 
God,  but  rather  as  an  exemplary  punishment  which 
was  not  so  much  demanded  by  divine  justice  as  by 
divine  wisdom  deciding  thus  for  the  purpose  of  per- 
petuating the  moral  world-order.  In  order  to 
maintain  the  validity  of  the  moral  law  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  men,  a  validity  which  would  have  been 
in  danger  if  God  had  simply  forgiven  sin  and 
omitted  punishment, —  in  order  that  the  exemplary 
punishment  might  emphasize  the  punishableness  of 
sin  (in  this  exceptional  case  an  example  was 
made  of  one  completely  innocent),  therefore  did 
God  bring  about  the  death  of  His  son  as  a  means  of 
salvation.  Thus  spoke  the  juristic  theologian,  Gro- 
tius.  Grotius  also  uttered  the  demand  for  political 
tolerance  of  various  religious  faiths;  and  scientific- 
ally based  this  demand  on  his  philosophical  natural 
law.  Therein  he  was  followed  by  the  philosophers, 
Locke  and  Spinoza,  of  whom  we  shall  treat  in  our 
next  lecture.  Common  to  all  dissidents  and  sects 
was  the  decided  interest  in  the  moral  and  legal  free- 
dom of  each  religious  individual;  therein  they  repre- 
sented the  Protestant  principle  more  logically  than 
did  the  official  churches  —  thus  much  must  be  con- 
ceded to  them. 

The  latest  congregation  builders  of  individualistic 
enthusiasm,  a  quality  common  to  most  Protestant 
dissidents,  were  the  Quakers  or,  as  they  called  them- 

235 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

selves,  the  Friends.  The  contemplative  shoemaker, 
George  Fox,  was  their  founder;  he  died  in  1691. 
He  was  a  pious  man  but  he  was  an  enthusiast  who 
held  his  inner  illumination  to  be  much  more  valuable 
than  the  worship  of  God  of  the  official  Church.  In 
many  ways,  he  reminds  us  of  that  German  theo- 
sophical  shoemaker,  Jacob  Boehme.  Robert  Bar- 
clay, 1676,  framed  the  Quaker  confession  of  faith. 
His  fundamental  thought  is  the  retirement  of  all 
external  means  of  salvation,  even  Holy  Writ,  be- 
hind the  inner  light  in  the  heart  of  man.  They  said 
that  this  inner  revelation  was  active  in  the  wise 
and  pious  of  all  peoples  and  had  been  from  the  be- 
ginning; that  from  it  originated  the  illumination  of 
the  Biblical  prophets  and  apostles.  Therefore,  it 
is  true  that  Holy  Writ  is  a  valuable  treasure  of  the 
Church,  because  the  authors  had  been  illumined, 
but  it  is  neither  the  last  source  nor  the  highest  rule 
of  truth;  it  is  possible  to  understand  it  correctly  and 
redeemingly  only  by  the  inner  light.  But  if  Holy 
Writ  is  merely  of  relative  importance,  then  sacra- 
mental performances  are  entirely  without  meaning. 
They  did  not  originate  with  Christ,  but  they  are 
really  pre-Christian  ceremonials  from  which  Christ 
had  indeed  freed  us.  The  true  baptism  is  naught 
else  but  the  baptism  of  the  spirit,  the  true  commun- 
ion is  the  spiritual  alliance  or  union  of  the  soul  with 
Christ,  which  needs  no  external  eating  or  drinking. 
Hence,  since  everything  rests  finally  upon  the  spirit, 

236 


Protestant  Sects 

which  works  where  it  wills,  there  is  no  need  of  spe- 
cial Church  offices  or  clerical  ranks,  but  the  Quak- 
ers among  themselves  are  all  equal  brethren  and  in 
the  gatherings  of  these  pious  men  he  who  is  im- 
pelled by  the  spirit  rises  and  gives  utterance  to  that 
which  the  spirit  has  poured  into  him  at  the  mo- 
ment. If  the  inspiration  is  lacking,  the  congrega- 
tion sits  silently  in  meeting. 

The  strength  of  the  Quakers  lay  from  the  begin- 
ning in  their  practical  piety,  their  honesty,  their 
sobriety,  their  patience  and  equanimity,  and  above 
all  in  their  effective  brotherly  love  —  these  are  their 
most  beautiful  characteristics.  In  consequence  of 
their  principles,  they  refused  to  serve  in  war  or 
to  take  an  oath.  They  look  down  upon  all  the 
usual  forms  of  social  politeness,  address  one  an- 
other as  '^  thou  "  and  do  not  remove  their  hats  in 
any  assembly.  They  despise  all  beautiful  sem- 
blance and  are  altogether  solid  citizens  and  good 
business  people  who  get  along  everywhere.  Their 
great  world  historic  merit  lies  in  this,  that  under 
the  leadership  of  the  great  William  Penn,  they  did, 
for  the  first  time,  embody  in  their  political  govern- 
ment in  Pennsylvania  the  fundamental  law  of  civic 
and  religious  freedom,  that  they  did  practically  car- 
ry it  out,  and  then  that  in  the  General  Assembly  of 
175^'  by  the  resolution  of  the  abolition  of  slavery, 
they  did  give  the  first  impulse  to  the  emancipation 
of  the  slaves,  accomplished  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 

22,7 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tury.  Thus  we  must  say  that  the  Quakers,  in  re- 
gard both  to  civil  and  to  religious  things,  were 
pioneers  of  popular  liberty. 

Within  the  Lutheran  Church,  Pietism  formed  not 
a  sect  but  a  peculiar  tendency  and  party.  It  em- 
anated from  Philip  Jacob  Spener,  born  in  Alsace, 
chief  pastor  in  Frankfort  a.M.,  then  court  preacher 
in  Dresden,  and  finally  preacher  in  Berlin  until 
1705.  Spener  was  a  man  of  great  piety  and  high 
moral  earnestness  and  of  great  practical  knowledge 
of  life.  He  was  a  man  who  was  driven  to  his  re- 
form activities  by  sorrow  over  the  needs  of  his 
time  and  over  the  petrifaction  of  the  Lutheran 
Church  into  a  dead  dogmatism,  morally  fruitless. 
He  said :  "  I  believe  that  not  all  has  been  accom- 
plished by  the  Reformation  which  should  have  been 
accomplished,  and  the  generations  following  ought 
to  be  obHgated  to  work  at  its  completion."  For  us 
that  is  a  self-evident  truth,  but  for  the  days  of 
rigid  Lutheranism  it  was  a  great  discovery  and  it 
took  a  bold  man  to  express  it.  In  his  Pia  desi- 
deria,  of  the  year  1675,  Spener  demanded,  first  of 
all,  a  renewal  of  the  spiritual  rank  by  a  deeper  and 
more  edifying  study  of  Scripture,  by  a  higher  val- 
uation of  pious  living,  as  against  dead,  scholastic 
knowledge,  by  a  more  tolerant  attitude  toward  the 
erring  and  unbelieving,  and  finally  by  more  serious 
employment  of  the  idea  of  the  general  priesthood, 
through  the  use  of  the  members  of  the  congregation 
for  the  common  service  of  piety  and  morality  in 

238 


Protestant  Sects 

the  congregation.  To  this  end  Spener  began,  after 
1670,  his  private  religious  gatherings  for  edifica- 
tion (collegia  pie  talis)  in  which  the  laymen  also 
were  permitted  and  asked  to  give  their  religious 
experiences.  According  to  Spener,  only  he  can  be 
a  good  theologian  who  has  been  reborn  and,  there- 
fore, can  speak  from  experience  concerning  sin  and 
grace.  All  theological  study  has  this  object :  name- 
ly, to  produce  that  inner  experience  in  the  servant 
of  the  congregation.  Although  Spener  did  not  di- 
rectly attack  Church  dogmas  and  founded  no  new 
sect,  yet  in  his  emphasis  of  inner  piety,  the  emo- 
tional experience,  there  was  indirectly  yet  decided- 
ly a  devaluation  of  dogmatic  formulas  of  belief. 
On  this  account,  the  orthodox  strongly  reproached 
him  with  indifferentism.  In  the  Lutheran  separa- 
tion of  holiness  from  justification,  Spener  recog- 
nized a  moral  danger  which  led  to  self-deception. 
Faith  was  to  prove  its  truth  by  its  fruits  in  the 
moral,  earnest  conduct  of  life.  As  against  the  all 
too  lax  morals  so  often  prevailing  among  the  ortho- 
dox Lutherans,  Spener  urged  ascetic  self-discipline 
and  moral  strength.  He  urged  not  only  abstinence 
from  coarser  sins,  but  also  from  such  temporal 
pleasures  as  gaming,  dancing,  visiting  theatres, 
making  journeys  and  the  like.  In  general,  the  char- 
acteristic of  a  true  Christian  is  a  disgust  of  the 
world  resulting  in  the  quiet  inward  equanimity,  the 
longing  for  heaven.  There  is  no  question  that  here- 
in Pietism  was  much  closer  to  mediaeval  mysticism, 

239 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

particularly  that  of  Thomas  a  Kempis,  than  to  the 
moral  view  of  life  of  Luther.  But  that  which  with 
Spener  (as  with  Calvin)  was  the  expression  of  an 
earnest  moral  attitude,  degenerated  among  the  Piet- 
tists  of  Halle  into  an  unhealthy  coquetry  with  the 
pain  of  sin  and  drought  of  heart,  with  grace  and 
bliss;  in  short,  it  degenerated  into  emotional  ex- 
cesses which  withheld  them  from  active  life  in  the 
world.  However,  with  all  such  excrescences,  as 
were  not  seldom  found  in  aristocratic  circles  and 
among  Pietistic  women,  we  must  not  forget  what 
the  Pietism  of  Halle  did  in  the  way  of  philan- 
thropic works.  August  Hermann  Francke  founded 
the  orphan  asylum  in  Halle  through  contributions 
made  entirely  by  fellow  believers.  It  must  be  con- 
ceded that  Pietism  is  a  one-sided  culture  of  emo- 
tional religion,  in  which  neither  the  understanding 
of  science  nor  practical  work  at  the  cultural  tasks  of 
society  was  given  proper  place;  that  must  be  con- 
ceded. But  it  must  also  be  said  that  the  Pietistic 
demand  for  personal  experience  was  a  return  to  the 
beginning  of  the  Lutheran  reformation;  that  Pie- 
tism continued  this  thought  and  thereby  prepared 
the  ground  for  the  revival  of  Church  and  theology, 
concerning  which  we  are  to  speak  later. 

Among  the  pupils  of  the  orphan  asylum  at  Halle 
was  the  young  Count  Zinzendorf,  who  had  early 
given  evidence  of  talent  for  establishing  and  di- 
recting communal  societies  in  the  congregation. 
When  he  learned  of  the  ''  Maehrisch  Brothers,"  the 

240 


Protestant  Sects 

remnant  of  the  old  Hussites  who  were  leading  a 
persecuted  existence  under  the  Austrian  govern- 
ment, he  invited  them  to  settle  on  his  own  territory 
on  the  Hutberg  in  Oberlausitz,  and  the  settlement 
bore  the  name  "  Herrnhut."  In  1727,  Zinzendorf 
became  the  founder  and  the  head  of  the  Herrnhut 
Congregation  of  Brothers,  which  was  to  become  "  A 
little  place  of  rest  for  the  invisible  congregation 
and  a  leaven  for  Christianity."  The  leading  prin- 
ciple, expressed  in  his  own  words,  is  as  follows: 
"  Those  who  are  within  the  brotherhood  should 
always  bear  a  loving  relation  to  all  the  children  of 
God  in  all  religions.  They  should  never  judge  and 
never  begin  a  quarrel  with  those  who  think  differ- 
ently, but  each  is  to  conserve  himself  in  Gospel  sim- 
plicity and  purity."  Zinzendorf  had  no  desire  to 
found  a  new  sect  or  belief,  as  little  as  Spener  had. 
Inside  of  the  large  Church  he  wanted  to  gather  a 
little  church  of  the  truly  illumined.  Because  the 
colony  was  founded  on  the  basis  of  the  Maehrisch 
Brothers,  it  was  a  simple  matter  to  give  this  special 
congregation  its  own  independent  organization. 
Naturally  Count  Zinzendorf  was  the  Director.  He 
had  himself  ordained  by  Jablonsky,  the  Maehrisch 
Bishop  and  court  preacher  at  Berlin.  He  held  the 
succession  of  the  episcopacy  in  his  congregation  in 
high  esteem.  Overseers,  servants,  nurses  for  the 
sick  and  the  poor  were  also  chosen.  The  congre- 
gation was  divided  up  into  little  choirs  which  met 
daily   for  the  purpose  of  edification.     From   1731 

241 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

on,  a  regular  mission  to  the  heathen  was  energet- 
ically carried  on  as  a  standing  task  of  the  congre- 
gation, and  mission  stations  were  planted  in  all 
parts  of  the  world  —  the  first  Protestant  mission- 
ary undertaking.  The  central  point  of  Herrnhut 
piety  was  the  pious  vision  of  the  suffering  Savior 
so  that  the  heart  might  be  moved,  gripped,  and 
blest  by  the  sight  of  suffering  love.  The  centraliza- 
tion of  their  pious  emotions  upon  this  one  point 
gave  their  services  a  simple  heartiness  and  natural- 
ness, which,  while  it  may  have  lacked  the  dogmas 
and  Church  ornamentation,  did  nevertheless  bind 
all  the  Brothers  together  in  mutual  love.  It  was 
an  organization  which  one  may  consider  to  be  the 
ennoblement  of  Protestant  order  and  life.  This 
religion  of  emotion  was  entirely  indifferent  toward 
dogmatic  conceptions  and  confessional  differences. 
"  It  is  entirely  indifferent  whether  a  soul  be  Re- 
formed, Lutheran,  or  Catholic,  if  it  but  fall  at  the 
feet  of  the  Savior."  This  picturesque  language 
usual  in  the  congregational  worship  set  itself  with 
a  grand  carelessness,  and  we  shall  have  to  say 
na'ivete,  above  and  beyond  all  dogmatic  decision 
and  correctness  of  concepts.  Christ  was  now  a 
brother,  now  a  father,  now  a  bridegroom,  now  the 
husband  of  the  soul,  and  accordingly  God  Father 
became  grandfather  and  father-in-law,  and  as  such 
was  quietly  retired  by  the  actual  sole  rulership  of 
the  deified  Savior.  Inasmuch  as  the  Holy  Spirit 
was  assigned  to  the  role  of  the  divine  mother  (as 

242 


Protestant  Sects 

was  the  case  in  the  old  Christian  Gnosis)  there  re- 
sulted a  proper  heavenly  family  to  which  the  pious 
soul  was  allied  in  some  very  close  relationship, 
such  as  grandchild,  or  son-in-law,  or  husband.  Zin- 
zendorf  himself  boasts  that  he  had  established  the 
family  idea,  that  being  the  most  respectable  among 
human  ideas,  in  place  of  the  idea  of  the  Trinity. 
In  so  far  he  is  perfectly  right,  for  in  fact  all  the 
world  of  religious  ideas  emanated  from  the  idea 
of  family.  We  are  equally  reminded  of  some  age- 
old  customs  and  notions  of  worship  found  in  nature 
religion  by  the  indelicate  and  awkward  fashion  in 
which  Zinzendorf  paints  the  mystical  union  of  the 
soul  with  the  Savior  in  pictures  of  mundane  bridal 
love  and  marriage.  To  the  spiritual  love  idyls,  in 
which  much  occurs  that  is  pretty  and  much  that  is 
ugly,  in  strange  contrast  stands  the  so-called  blood- 
theology  of  the  Herrnhuters  —  their  tendency  to 
wallow  in  what  I  might  almost  call  a  certain  lust 
for  monstrosities  of  fantasy,  the  pictures  of  the 
suffering  and  dead  Savior,  the  wounds,  blood,  cross, 
grave,  corpse,  yes,  even  the  odor  of  the  corpse! 
This,  too,  is  a  contrast  to  which  there  are  many 
analogies  in  the  history  of  ancient  and  mediaeval 
religion:  I  suggest  the  orgiasms  of  the  worship 
of  Cybele  and  Adonis  in  the  heathenism  of  Asia 
Minor,  and  for  the  middle  ages  I  recall  the  wounds 
of  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi.  Thus  the  Herrnhuter 
religion  (connectedly  described  in  Spangenberg's 
book,  Idea  fidei  fratriim,  1779)  offers  much  that 

243 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

is  of  interest  to  the  historian  of  comparative  re- 
ligion, which  may,  in  a  measure,  recompense  him 
for  the  lack  of  all  clear  concepts  and  philosophic 
thinking  in  that  circle.  Wide  as  is  the  Herrnhuter 
faith,  so  narrow  is  their  life.  In  their  settlements 
are  no  monastery  walls,  no  vows  of  poverty  and 
celibacy,  and  yet  there  is  something  of  a  monas- 
terial  spirit,  an  unfree  subjection  of  the  individual 
under  the  order  of  the  society  and  the  moral  dis- 
cipline of  the  congregation,  which  enters  into  the 
most  personal  affairs  of  the  individual  —  such  as 
the  choice  in  marriage  —  and  which  is  kept  up  by 
an  oppressive  system  of  mutual  spying  and  reproof. 
In  this  regard,  in  the  matter  of  personal  unfreedom 
and  horror  of  public  life  with  its  tasks  of  culture, 
the  Herrnhuters  are  not  a  whit  behind  the  Pietists 
of  Halle;  yet  they  wanted  to  be  so  different  from 
them  that  they  called  them  "  miserable  Christians," 
because  the  Pietists  seldom  went  beyond  the  misera- 
ble pain  of  sin  and  the  struggle  for  repentance, 
while  the  Herrnhuter  piety  is  a  peace  in  the  joyous 
emotion  of  the  atoning  love  of  Jesus  —  a  purely 
Lutheran  type  but  with  a  strong  twist  to  the  fem- 
inine. 

At  the  same  time  with  Herrnhuterism,  Meth- 
odism came  up  in  England.  This,  too,  was  a  sep- 
aratist reform  movement,  a  reaction  of  a  lively 
piety  against  the  petrifaction  of  the  public  Church. 
John  and  Charles  Wesley,  both  students  at  Oxford, 
united  with  several  other  hke-minded  comrades  and 

244 


Protestant  Sects 

established  regular  hours  of  edification,  agreeing 
to  a  seriously  moral  manner  of  life,  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  home  and  foreign  mission.  Through 
Luther's  preface  to  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans, 
John  Wesley  became  so  deeply  impressed  by  the 
subject  of  sin  and  grace  that  one  day,  in  1738,  his 
experience  of  the  feeHng  of  grace  burst  upon  him 
as  a  sudden  conversion.  He  undertook  a  journey 
to  Herrnhut  and,  upon  his  return,  at  once  began 
to  preach  under  the  open  heaven,  for  the  churches 
were  naturally  barred  against  him.  His  own  in- 
spired sermons  and  those  of  his  friends  dealt  with 
sin  and  hell  on  the  one  hand,  with  the  grave  and 
bliss  on  the  other.  These  sermons  made  a  power- 
ful impression  on  the  mass  of  listeners.  Amid 
spasms  and  ecstasies,  weeping  and  laughing,  sor- 
rowing and  rejoicing  (not  unlike  the  old  Christian 
enthusiasm  of  the  "speaking  of  tongues"),  the 
conversions  of  masses  came  about.  Wesley  and 
George  Whitfield,  who  as  a  preacher  was  even  su- 
perior to  Wesley,  parted  on  the  question  of  the 
doctrine  of  predestination.  Wesley,  followed  by 
the  majority  of  the  sect,  accepted  the  mild  tendency 
of  the  Arminians;  Whitfield,  that  of  the  stern 
Calvinists.  In  1743,  Wesley  gave  Methodism  a 
firm  organization  in  which  much  was  taken  over 
from  the  Herrnhuters;  for  example,  the  division 
of  the  congregation  in  classes  and  bands  which, 
from  time  to  time  met  for  the  exchange  of  re- 
ligious experiences.     Wesley's  relation  to  the  Epis- 

245 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

copal  Church  was  exactly  the  same  as  that  of  the 
Herrnhuters  to  the  Lutheran  Church.  Wesley  did 
not  desire  to  be  counted  among  the  dissenters.  He 
strove  rather  for  a  religious  renewal  of  the  Church 
in  general.  The  circumstances  of  the  times  caused 
them  to  become  a  special  Church  sect  with  the  larg- 
est following  in  England  and  America.  Methodism 
owes  this  to  its  Calvinistic  force  of  will  and  action 
which  differentiates  it  from  the  Lutheran  emotion- 
al rapture  of  the  Herrnhuter. 


^6 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE    PERIOD   OF   ENLIGHTENMENT 

In  the  religious  movements  of  the  Protestant 
sects,  discussed  in  our  last  lecture,  the  Protestant 
spirit  had  reacted  on  its  religious  and  moral  side 
against  the  petrifaction  of  the  Church  and  striven 
for  a  religious  revival  of  Christianity.  Except  in 
the  case  of  the  Socinians,  they  had  undertaken  no 
reasoning  criticism;  and  yet,  intellectual  independ- 
ence of  thought,  according  to  the  laws  of  reason 
on  the  basis  of  actual  experience,  does  belong  to  the 
nature  of  the  Protestant  spirit.  Hence  it  could  not 
be  long  before  this  side  of  the  reaction  against  the 
Church  system  also  made  its  appearance. 

From  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  to 
the  close  of  the  eighteenth,  it  took  place  in  that 
movement  usually  designated  "  Enlightenment." 
With  all  of  its  intellectual  one-sidedness,  Enlighten- 
ment was  doubtless  a  fruit  of  the  Reformation  and 
the  Renaissance  —  an  important  step  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  Protestant  principle.  For  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact  it  was  Enlightenment  which  completed 
the  break  with  the  mediaeval  world-view,  the  one 
in  which  even  the  Protestant  churches  up  to  that 
time   were   caught.     Enlightenment    first   laid    the 

247 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

foundation  for  the  modern  manner  of  thinking,  the 
one  in  which  we  Hve  to-day,  for  whose  develop- 
ment, however,  other  factors  have  been  added  since 
the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Various  causes  were  active  in  bringing  about  the 
age  of  Enlightenment.  First  of  all,  the  rise  of  the 
natural  sciences  which  gave  a  new  vision  into  the 
width  of  the  world  and  the  lawfulness  of  natural 
phenomena.  Philosophy  took  over  and  generalized 
their  methods  and  applied  them  to  the  religious 
mode  of  thinking.  Out  of  philological  studies, 
there  arose  a  new  science  of  history,  too.  A  sense 
of  critical  judgment  of  sources  of  history  and  tra- 
dition was  awakened;  and  when  this  was  applied 
to  the  Bible,  it  led  to  the  shaking  of  the  doctrine 
of  inspiration.  Finally,  there  was  added  the  new 
formation  of  political  relations  after  the  religious 
wars  of  the  seventeenth  century,  whereby  state 
power  in  religious  matters  was  first  diminished  here 
and  there  and  finally  removed. 

I  must  limit  myself  in  my  discussion  of  this  great 
and  many-sided  epoch  of  the  spirit.  Curiously 
enough  that  epoch  has  as  yet  received  no  compre- 
hensive and  connected  description,  probably  because 
victorious  romanticism  and  its  haughty  despisal  of 
Enlightenment  refuses  to  acknowledge  the  deep- 
rooted  importance  of  the  latter.  I  will  select  a  few 
of  the  main  points  out  of  the  diversity,  those  points 
which  were  of  epoch-making  importance  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Christian  faith. 

248 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

Three  years  after  Luther's  death,  in  1543,  Coper- 
nicus's  book,  On  the  Courses  of  the  Heavenly 
Bodies,  appeared.  Although  in  imperfect  fashion, 
in  embryo,  it  teaches  the  present-day  heliocentric 
world  system  as  against  the  old  geocentric  system. 
Melanchthon  foresaw  the  danger  to  theology  in- 
volved in  this  discovery,  and  demanded  its  suppres- 
sion by  the  state.  But  the  theologians  bothered 
very  little  about  these  things,  being  deeply  immersed 
in  their  dogmatic  disputes, —  until  the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  when  Galileo,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  telescope  and  the  founder  of  math- 
ematical physics  and  mechanics,  further  developed 
and  established  the  Copernican  astronomy,  for 
which  he  had  to  pay  by  imprisonment  and  recanta- 
tion, all  of  which  we  spoke  of  in  a  previous  lecture 
concerning  the  Inquisition.  The  Roman  Inquisi- 
tion correctly  saw  that  in  this  new  astronomy  a 
new  and  greater  danger  than  all  the  theological 
heresies  together  threatened  the  Church  system. 
The  least  of  these  things  was  that  this  astronomy 
showed  the  impossibility  of  the  Biblical  story  of 
creation.  In  fact,  it  destroyed  the  entire  stage 
upon  which  was  played  the  whole  traditional  story 
of  revelation,  from  the  Fall  to  the  reappearance  of 
Christ.  If  the  earth  is  changed  into  a  rolling  ball 
in  the  universe,  what  becomes  of  heaven  above, 
the  seat  of  the  blessed  —  and  of  hell  below,  the 
place  of  the  damned?  What  becomes  of  the  de- 
scent and  ascent  of  the  Son  of  God,  of  the  whole 

249 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

dramatic  movement  of  upper  and  lower  spirits? 
Must  not  the  disappearance  of  the  cosmic  frame  of 
the  story  of  revelation  carry  with  it  the  disappear- 
ance of  that  story  itself?  In  the  light  of  this,  the 
sternness  of  the  Inquisition  is  conceivable  from  the 
Church  standpoint  —  but  naturally  it  did  not  hem 
the  progress  of  science. 

In  the  course  of  the  seventeenth  century,  Kepler 
and  Newton  pushed  astronomy  to  such  an  extent 
that  it  became  certain  knowledge  of  the  universe, 
and  sought  to  know  the  lawfulness  in  the  movement 
of  heavenly  bodies  as  well  as  in  the  phenomena  of 
earth.  The  leading-strings  of  Aristotelian  philoso- 
phy were  quietly  thrown  aside  and  a  questioning  of 
nature  herself  was  begun  so  that  by  experiment 
her  secrets  might  be  arrived  at  directly.  For  this 
inquiry,  mathematics  offered  the  precise  form. 
The  rise  of  mathematics  and  the  exact  sciences  in 
general  sharpened  logical  thinking,  awakened  a 
sense  of  the  regularity  and  lawfulness  of  eventua- 
tion,  of  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  —  in  short 
it  opened  the  eye  to  the  real  world  in  contradis- 
tinction to  the  mediaeval  world  of  fantasy  and 
fable  in  which  angels  and  devils  took  the  place  of 
nature. 

This  new  mode  of  thinking,  developed  along  the 
lines  of  the  natural  sciences  and  mathematics,  was 
formulated  by  the  philosophers  under  general  prin- 
ciples and  main  fundamental  thoughts  —  all  of 
them  together  making  up  a  world-view.     Various 

250 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

as  were  the  ways  of  the  individual  philosophers,  in 
this  they  were  unanimous,  that  they  no  longer 
would  have  theological  authority  master  them  by 
any  fixed  rule  of  fate,  but  that  the  inner  law  of 
thinking,  itself,  should  furnish  them  their  norm. 

Descartes  demanded  doubt  of  everything  which 
could  not  stand  the  test  of  thinking  as  the  begin- 
ning of  all  true  knowledge,  for  the  only  certainty 
was  the  thinking  "I"  itself:  Cogito  ergo  sum! 
Spinoza  began  with  the  highest  general  thought  of 
God  as  the  Infinite  Being  in  whom  thinking  and 
extent,  spirit  and  nature,  are  one.  According  to 
Spinoza,  God  is  not  a  personal  being  of  any  kind 
such  as  we  men  are,  separated  from  the  world  and 
passing  a  lonesome  existence  in  heaven,  but  He  is 
the  indwelling  cause  in  the  world,  the  One  Eternal 
Being  whose  collective  phenomenon  is  the  world 
of  time  and  space,  from  whom  as  a  cause  all  in- 
dividual being  and  becoming  follows  with  mathe- 
matical necessity.  Just  as  unchangeable  as  is  the 
Divine  Being  itself,  so  unchangeable  is  also  the  law 
of  causation  which  governs  the  world.  There  can 
be  no  breaches  of  this  law  by  miracles,  for  thus 
God  would  contradict  Himself,  for  the  laws  of  na- 
ture are  nothing  else  but  the  eternal  forms  of  His 
causality.  Man  has  no  right  to  demand  miracles, 
for  that  would  be  a  supererogation  on  the  part  of 
his  own  finite,  limited  being.  Rather  it  is  proper 
that  man  should  yield  in  unselfish  humility  to  the 
all-powerful  will  of  God.     Such  was  the  faith  of 

251 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Spinoza  whom  his  contemporaries  looked  upon  as 
an  atheist,  while  Goethe  and  Schleiermacher  re- 
garded him  as  a  saint. 

As  against  the  monism  of  Spinoza,  the  Jewish 
philosopher,  Leibniz,  the  German  idealist,  defended 
the  reality  of  things  individual.  According  to  him 
the  world  is  a  system  of  acting  and  conceiving  pow- 
ers, souls  (he  called  them  monads),  the  harmony 
of  which  is  based  in  the  creative  understanding  of 
God.  All  life,  according  to  Leibniz,  is  development 
from  within  outward,  the  object  of  which  is  the 
growing  perfection  of  each  being,  that  is  an  ever 
more  complete  accommodation  or  harmony  of  each 
with  every  other  being,  with  the  whole  of  the 
world.  Of  all  possible  worlds,  God  created  the 
best  possible,  that  is,  the  one  in  which  the  most 
perfection  could  possibly  come  to  realization.  The 
evils  of  the  world  do  not  contradict  this  in  the 
least,  for  in  a  world  of  finite  things  they  are  partly 
inevitable,  but  they  are  also  means  to  the  end  of 
the  development  of  life,  and  thus  means  toward 
the  increasing  perfection  of  the  whole.  Out  of 
this  knowledge  of  the  all- wise  ordering  and  regu- 
lation of  the  world,  springs  the  human  love  for 
God,  the  perfect  good.  And  this  in  turn  becomes 
the  motive  for  the  good  action  of  man  toward  his 
fellow  men.  Correct  knowledge  and  virtuous  ac- 
tion, Leibniz  holds  to  be  the  two  characteristics 
of  true  piety,  which  while  it  holds  Church  dogmas 
high  in  honor  yet  regards  them  as  imperfect  at- 

252 


The  Peiiud  of  Enlightenment 

tempts  to  express  religious  truth;  but  that  truth 
must  never  permit  these  dogmas  to  force  a  rejection 
of  reason.  Leibniz  says  that  would  be  the  charac- 
teristic of  an  obstinacy  bordering  on  delusion  or 
hypocrisy ! 

As  against  the  idealism  of  Leibniz,  John  Locke, 
an  Englishman,  urged  sensualism,  that  is  to  say, 
he  taught  that  all  the  content  of  our  consciousness 
comes  from  without  by  sensual  perception.  Our 
knowledge  rests  upon  experience  and  it  is  the  more 
certain  the  more  immediate  are  our  own  percep- 
tions and  the  less  they  rest  upon  foreign  presenta- 
tion. Hence,  no  revelation  is  valid  which  contra- 
dicts our  experiential  knowledge  of  the  world.  A 
disregard  of  reason  by  which  a  revelation  is  in- 
troduced would  be,  according  to  Locke,  an  excess 
which  would  in  the  end  destroy  both  reason  and 
revelation  and  set  up  in  their  stead  groundless  im- 
aginings. So,  according  to  him,  too,  Christianity 
must  be  understood  in  reasonable  fashion,  namely, 
as  a  pure  moral  law  with  the  hope  of  future  bliss; 
thus  understood,  its  content  does  not  go  beyond 
reason.  But  the  belief  in  supernatural  revela- 
tion is  justified  so  far  as  it  is  held  to  be  the  form 
which  was  practically  necessary  in  order  to  gain 
universal  authority  for  its  moral  truth.  The 
Church  is  a  free  association  of  conviction,  an  as- 
sociation which  has  as  its  object  life  according  to 
the  law  of  virtue,  and,  therefore,  it  must  be  kept 
well  apart  from  the  legal  organization  of  the  state. 

253 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tocke  details  his  idea  that  the  state  must  never  mix 
in  religious  matters  by  laws  of  force,  for  religion 
is  a  thing  of  personal  freedom.  For  the  realiza- 
tion of  this  idea  of  tolerance  which  Locke  repre- 
sented, in  accord  with  Leibniz  and  Spinoza,  he  him- 
self furnished  an  example  in  the  constitution  which 
he  drew  up  for  the  American  free  state  of  Caro- 
lina, 1669.  That  was  great  progress,  the  impor- 
tance of  which  is  not  adequately  honored  to-day, 
because  the  thought  which  was  then  absolutely  new 
has  become  self-evident  for  us. 

The  English  and  French  Freethinkers  or  Deists, 
as  they  were  called,  attached  themselves  to  Locke, 
just  as  the  German  Rationalists  did  to  Leibniz.  In 
1696,  John  Tolland  wrote  a  book  maintaining  that 
Christianity  is  not  mysterious  and  that  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  Gospels  either  contrary  to  or  beyond  rea- 
son. Matthew  Tyndall  sought  to  prove  that  Chris- 
tianity is  as  old  as  creation  and  that  the  Gospel  is 
nothing  more  than  the  renewed  proclamation  of  the 
religion  of  nature.  As  unchangeable  as  human  na- 
ture is  the  true  religion,  and  its  content  is  one  with 
morality.  Whatever  goes  beyond  that  is  supersti- 
tion which  the  heathen  and  the  Jews  had  mixed  with 
the  true  religion  until  Jesus  Christ  restored  the  orig- 
inal natural  religion.  After  that,  the  priests  of  the 
Church  disturbed  and  distorted  the  truth  anew  by 
their  superstitious  errors  and  ceremonies.  This 
opinion  was  acclaimed  in  Germany  and  for  a  long 
time  remained  the  gospel  of  Enlightenment.     Ac- 

254 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

cording  to  Shaftesbury,  religion  is  the  optimistic 
belief  in  the  beauty  and  goodness  of  the  divine 
world-order,  which  is  valuable  as  the  basis  and 
motive  of  a  free  and  beautiful  morahty,  but  this 
had  been  polluted  and  disturbed  by  the  reward  and 
punishment  faith  of  Church  dogmas  and  in  the 
end  turned  to  its  very  contrary, —  to  inhumanity, 
—  so  that  the  state  and  the  authorities  mix  in  and, 
under  the  pretense  of  caring  for  the  salvation  of 
the  soul  beyond,  thoroughly  torture  men  here. 

While  most  of  these  Freethinkers  began  with 
the  supposition  of  an  essential  agreement  between 
historical  Christianity  and  the  religion  of  reason, 
others,  such  as  Bolingbroke  and  Dodwell,  strongly 
emphasized  the  opposition  between  the  two,  claiming 
that  irrationality  was  the  specific  characteristic  of 
positive  belief  and  of  revelation,  and  held  it  to  be 
both  impossible  and  not  permissible  to  make  any  at- 
tempt at  mediation  between  religion  and  reason ;  this 
was  a  massive  supernaturalism  behind  which  was 
hidden  a  thoroughgoing  scepticism.  This  scepticism 
it  was  which  the  most  important  of  all  these  Free- 
thinkers of  the  eighteenth  century,  David  Hume, 
worked  out  into  a  finely  spun  theory,  in  which  one 
may  find  the  completion  as  well  as  the  destruction 
of  the  theology  of  Enlightenment  which  emanated 
from  Locke.  As  Hume  ruined  philosophic  em- 
piricism by  his  theory  of  knowledge,  in  that  he 
doubted  the  validity  of  our  logical  categories  of 
substantiality  and  causality,  and  by  keen  reasoning 

255 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

sought  to  prove  the  impossiblHty  of  any  certain 
causal  conclusions,  he  too  subjected  the  religious 
presuppositions  of  the  Deists  to  a  disintegrating  and 
destructive  criticism  in  his  book  On  the  Natural 
History  of  Religion,  iyS7-  He  first  demonstrated 
that  the  presupposed  original  religion  was  not  a 
high  moral  monotheism,  but  had  been  a  low,  crude 
polytheism  or  belief  in  spirits;  that  this  had  not 
emanated  from  reasonable  thinking,  but  was  rather 
the  product  of  the  power  of  imagination  and  the 
sentiments  of  the  heart, —  fear  and  hope,  with  uncer- 
tainty concerning  the  actual  cause  of  events  added. 
The  origin  of  religion,  then,  is  not  to  be  discovered 
in  pure  human  reason,  but  in  the  impure  human  pas- 
sions and  imaginations,  in  the  irrational  side  of 
man.  In  his  dialogues  on  natural  religion,  he  dem- 
onstrates completely  the  theoretical  weakness  of  the 
proofs  of  God's  existence,  and  the  uncertainty  and 
indefiniteness  of  natural  theology  based  on  logical 
arguments.  His  advice  was  to  take  refuge  in  posi- 
tive religion,  though  at  another  time  he  condemns 
all  positive  religions  as  both  unreasonable  and  com- 
mon superstition.  That  was  a  radical  scepticism 
historically  justified  by  the  fact  that  it  uncovered 
the  fundamental  error  of  all  preceding  Enlighten- 
ment,—  its  psychological  and  historical  superficial- 
ity; but  this,  on  its  part,  was  too  one-sidedly  nega- 
tive to  be  a  halting  place.  For  this  reason,  scep- 
ticism in  England  never  became  widespread. 

Hume  met  with  success  in  France  where  Voltaire 
256 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

and  the  Encyclopaedists,  Didefot  and  D'Alembert, 
became  his  most  influential  representatives.  Vol- 
taire was  educated  in  the  school  of  the  Jesuits  and 
in  the  aristocratic  society  of  Paris  as  a  scoffer. 
During  his  three  years'  stay  in  England,  he  became 
acquainted  with  the  writings  of  the  Deists,  and  on 
his  return  he  spread  their  views  throughout  France 
in  his  numerous  books.  Without  any  philosophic 
depth  but  with  healthy  human  understanding,  with 
lively  wit  and  control  of  literary  form,  Voltaire 
fought  not  against  religion  in  general  (for  he  held 
fast  ever  to  his  belief  in  God)  but  against  the  re- 
ligion of  the  Church,  which  he  held  to  be  a  struc- 
ture of  deception  and  a  fount  of  misery.  As  an  ex- 
cuse for  him  it  may  be  offered  that  while  he  was 
well  read  yet  he  lacked  all  historical  understanding 
of  Christianity.  Again,  he  lived  in  a  time  and  an 
environment  which  set  before  him  the  deepest  cor- 
ruption among  the  clerics,  in  bigoted  as  well  as 
frivolous  society.  And,  finally,  it  was  the  memories 
of  the  French  Bartholomew's  Night,  the  dragonades 
of  Louis  XIV,  and  the  Albigensian  Wars,  which 
in  Voltaire  turned  their  torches  against  Christianity, 
—  as  Strauss  aptly  remarks  in  his  monograph  on 
Voltaire. 

While  Enlightenment  led  to  a  breach  with  Chris- 
tianity in  France,  in  Germany  it  preserved  a  more 
thoughtful  attitude  looking  to  a  reconciliation  of 
Christianity  with  modern  culture.  This  was  in  Hne 
with  its  origin  in  the  optimistic  idealism  of  Leibniz's 

257 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

philosophy.  Christian  Wolff,  who  was  professor 
in  Halle  from  1707,  rendered  meritorious  service 
in  the  propagation  and  popularization  of  it.  In 
his  book  Reasonable  Thoughts  concerning  God,  the 
World,  and  the  So  ids  of  Men,  Wolff  attempted  to 
base  the  belief  in  God,  Providence,  and  immortality, 
as  the  essential  content  of  a  natural  theology,  on 
logical  proofs.  He  did  not  deny  historic  revela- 
tion, he  merely  maintained  that  it  goes  beyond  rea- 
son; he  held  that  it  never  could  be  in  opposition  to 
it  and  that,  therefore,  it  is  the  prerogative  of  reason 
to  pass  upon  the  characteristics  of  a  true  revelation. 
The  Pietists  of  Halle  regarded  this  as  a  danger  to 
positive  faith ;  they  joined  hands  with  their  old  en- 
emies, the  orthodox  Lutherans,  against  whom  they 
had  until  now  defended  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual conscience,  to  battle  against  the  common  foe 
whom  they  spied  in  the  rising  rationalistic  philos- 
ophy of  Wolff.  The  Pietist  accusation  against 
Wolff  (that  he  was  an  atheist  and  fatalist)  brought 
about  the  decree  of  Frederick  William  I,  which 
drove  Wolff  from  Halle  under  pain  of  the  halter. 
He  fled  to  Marburg.  When,  however,  seventeen 
years  later  Frederick  the  Great  ascended  the  throne, 
—  that  friend  of  Enlightenment  and  tolerance  who 
permitted  everyone  to  achieve  bliss  after  his  own 
fashion  —  Wolff  was  called  back  to  Prussia,  that  is 
to  Halle,  with  all  honors.  And  therewith  the  ruler- 
ship  of  the  Pietists  there  was  ended.  During  the 
entire  rule  of  this  great  King  the  golden  age  of 

258 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

German  Enlightenment  lasted;  with  all  its  freedom 
and  historical  subjectivity,  it  never  became  a  friv- 
olous mockery  of  religion;  and  the  great  King  him- 
self Was  too  seriously  conscientious  not  to  respect 
the  honest  faith  of  every  man,  even  the  most  ortho- 
dox. This  is  evidenced  by  that  reply  to  Ziethen :  — 
''  I  have  every  respect  for  his  faith,  let  him  hold 
fast  to  it !  " 

In  the  German  Enlightenment  we  distinguish  two 
tendencies;  one  popular  and  philosophic,  and  the 
other  theological  and  historical.  The  main  expo- 
nent of  the  former  was  the  Allgemeine  Deutsche 
Bibliothek  published  by  Nikolai,  the  Berlin  book- 
seller, a  bold  and  honest  zealot  for  the  rights  of  the 
healthy  human  understanding.  By  his  overvalua- 
tion of  himself  and  by  his  silly  derogation  of  all 
which  was  beyond  his  narrow  horizon,  that  of  a 
prosaic  understanding,  he  brought  it  about  that  the 
great  poets  and  thinkers  held  him  up  as  the  per- 
sonification of  all  Philistine  mediocrity,  which  place 
he  occupies  to  this  day.  A  colleague  of  his,  as  far 
as  attitude  was  concerned,  was  the  Berlin  Jew, 
Mendelssohn,  who  popularized  the  Platonic  doc- 
trine of  immortality  in  his  PhcedoUj  playing  the 
part  of  a  modern  Socrates.  In  the  interest  of  his 
Jewish  co-religionists,  he  demanded  the  separation 
of  the  state  from  both  Church  and  religion.  More 
important  was  The  Nezv  Apology  of  Socrates  by 
the  moral  philosopher,  Eberhard,  who  defended  the 
humane  morality  of  the  heathen  against  the  Augus- 

259 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tinian  dogma  of  inherited  sin,  which  presents  the 
most  beautiful  virtues  of  the  heathen  as  merely 
brilliant  sins  and  according  to  which  all  men  are 
damned  because  of  the  sin  of  the  first  man  and 
will  be  saved  onty  through  the  non-sin  fulness  of 
another  man.  To  the  reproach  that  he  was  mixing 
up  philosophy  and  theology,  Eberhard  replied  that 
in  the  end  the  theological  systems  are  nothing  else 
but  philosophy,  and,  therefore,  cannot  be  judged 
other  than  by  philosophy,  and  in  general  these  two 
sciences  are  not  separated  in  the  realm  of  truth,  but 
only  in  books.  Besides,  dogmatics  was  richly  dow- 
ered with  Wolff's  philosophy  and  popular  Enlight- 
enment by  such  enlightened  theologians  as  Sack, 
Teller,  and  Baumgarten.  This  was  an  Enlighten- 
ment which  was  strong  on  the  side  of  its  criticism 
of  Church  dogma,  but  altogether  too  flatly  eudae- 
monistic  and  utilitarian  to  do  justice  to  the  religious 
and  moral  depth  of  Christianity. 

Of  special  importance  for  the  further  develop- 
ment of  German  theology  were  the  historical-bib- 
lical works  of  theologians  like  John  David  Mich- 
aelis, Ernesti,  and  Semler,  who  was  professor  in 
Halle  from  1752  to  1791.  Semler  has  been  called 
the  father  of  rationalism.  Perhaps  that  is  an  ex- 
aggeration, but  in  any  event  he  was  its  classic  rep- 
resentative in  the  eighteenth  century.  He  began  as 
a  Pietist,  passed  through  the  school  of  Baumgarten 
the  rationalist,  then,  by  assiduous  study  of  the  New 
Testament  and  patristic  literature,  Semler  achieved 

260 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

an  independent,  scientific  standpoint;  he  arrived  at 
a  conviction  which,  despite  all  its  faults, —  and  it 
naturally  shares  those  of  its  day, —  stands  as  the 
beginning  of  all  modern  historical  critical  theology. 
By  his  criticism  of  the  canon,  he  tore  down  the 
hedge  of  inspiration  which,  as  he  himself  said,  had 
been  put  all  around  these  writings.  He  showed  that 
the  New  Testament  was  not  a  uniform  doctrinal 
law  book  which  had,  so  to  speak,  fallen  from  heav- 
en, but  that  it  had  grown  as  a  collection  of  first 
century  evidences  of  Christianity.  So,  too,  by 
Church  history,  he  showed  that  the  dogmas  grew 
up  under  the  conditions  of  time  and  individual;  and 
in  so  doing  he  often  took  the  part  of  the  heretics 
against  the  orthodox.  Therefore,  according  to 
Semler,  the  dogmatic  formulas  belong  only  in  the 
public  Church  religion,  a  sort  of  conventional  form 
for  what  is  commonly  believed,  but  they  do  not  be- 
long authoritatively  in  the  private  religion  of  the 
individual  Christian ;  for  the  latter  only  that  part  of 
historical  tradition  is  of  value  which  leads  to  the 
moral  betterment  of  men.  Semler  holds  that  the 
kernel  of  Christianity  is  the  moral  religion  of  rea- 
son which,  while  it  rests  on  the  authority  of  Christ, 
needs  to  be  interpreted  by  reason.  An  understand- 
ing of  Bible  and  Church  history  serves  this  pur- 
pose when  critical  resciarch  is  free  from  prejudices. 
In  this  fashion  Semler  sought  to  combine  the  free- 
dom of  scientific  research  with  a  conservative  piety 
toward  historic  Christianity.     Consequently  it  was 

261 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

no  departure  from  his  principles,  but  merely  a  dis- 
play of  the  positive  side  as  against  radicalism, 
which  made  him  the  opponent  of  the  superficial 
Bahrdt  and  the  Wolfenbuettler  Fragments.  It  is 
to  be  regretted  that  it  resulted  in  a  sharp  personal 
conflict  with  Lessing,  but  it  can  be  both  understood 
and  forgiven. 

Gotthold  Ephraim  Lessing  was  an  Enlightener 
of  the  grandest  style,  who  placed  all  of  his  excep- 
tional spirit  at  the  service  of  Enlightenment  in  most 
diverse  departments.  However,  he  was  so  far  su- 
perior to  the  other  representatives  of  German  En- 
lightenment, both  in  width  and  depth  of  spiritual 
gift,  that  it  may  be  doubted  whether  one  can  count 
him  of  their  ranks;  whether  he  is  not  rather  to  be 
considered  their  opponent  and  their  conqueror.  By 
his  broad  manner  of  thinking,  he  rose  far  beyond 
all  petty  utilitarian  standards ;  by  his  historic  sense, 
he  broke  with  their  unhistoric  subjectivism;  by  his 
incorruptible  clarity  and  truthfulness,  he  brushed 
ruthlessly  away  the  fog  of  their  partialnesses  and 
the  dogmatism  of  their  self-satisfied  arrogance  of 
infallibility.  Lessing  was  not  pleased  with  the  or- 
dinary Enlightenment  of  his  time,  not  because  it 
was  Enlightenment  or  progress,  but  because  it  was 
not  nearly  clear  and  decided  enough,  because  its 
philosophy  was  too  superficial,  and  because  their 
combination  of  the  old  and  the  new  seemed  to 
him  too  varied  a  mixture  of  the  impure  and  the 
unclean  —  a  mixture  of  such  muddy  nature  that 

262 


The  Period  of  Enlightenment 

the  old  orthodoxy  consequently  seemed  preferable 
to  him.  Lessing  judged  the  so-called  *'  reasonable 
Christianity  "  of  the  modern  theologians  of  his  day 
as  one  might  judge  of  certain  theologians  of  our 
day :  "  Too  bad  that  one  neither  knows  quite 
where  he  nor  where  his  Christianity  rests ! "  Ap- 
parently the  old  theology  quarrels  with  the  same 
human  understanding,  but  the  new  theology  prefers 
to  bribe  it.  For  this  reason,  it  would  be  better  to 
make  a  compromise  with  the  open  enemy  in  order 
to  guard  more  carefully  against  the  secret  one.  In 
fact,  Lessing  was  more  radical  and,  at  the  same 
time,  more  conservative  than  all  the  Enlighteners 
of  his  time.  He  was  more  radical  in  his  attack 
on  the  idolatry  of  the  Bible  and  all  traditional  his- 
toric faiths,  and  he  was  more  conservative  in  his 
understanding  of  the  religious  ideas  in  Church 
Christianity.  His  publication  of  the  Wolfenbuet- 
tler  Fragments,  which  had  been  written  by  Rei- 
marus,  afforded  occasion  for  the  celebrated  theo- 
logical polemics  against  Goetze,  the  chief  pastor  at 
Hamburg.  The  main  thought  of  these  polemics  is 
as  follows:  The  Bible  is  not  Christianity  and  the 
letter  is  not  the  spirit.  Christianity  had  long  been 
present  before  there  was  any  New  Testament  Bible. 
Much  that  is  in  the  Bible  has  nothing  to  do  with 
Christianity.  The  Bible  contains  but  is  not  the  re- 
ligion. The  historical  part  of  the. Bible  is  subject 
to  doubt,  but  the  religious  truth  of  Christianity  no 
longer  depends  on  the  historic  truth  of  the  Bible; 

263 


The  Development  of  Christianity; 

for  accidental  truths  of  history  can  never  become 
the  proof  of  necessary  truths  of  reason.  Yet  with 
all  the  relativity  of  historical  bits  of  traditional 
myths  and  legends,  Lessing  is  able  to  value  the  im- 
portance of  history  altogether  as  a  progressive  "  ed- 
ucation of  the  human  race."  In  all  religions,  he 
seeks  nothing  but  the  movement  according  to  which 
alone  the  human  understanding  could  have  devel- 
oped and  which  involves  the  errors  of  childish 
stages  of  development  which  deserve  neither  scorn 
nor  anger.  Just  as  the  New  Testament  surpassed 
the  Old,  as  the  second  and  better  elementary  book, 
so  the  progress  of  the  divine  education  can  lead  up- 
ward and  onward  to  a  new,  eternal  gospel,  and  at 
the  close  of  his  Education  of  the  Human  Race,  he 
cried  enthusiastically :  "  It  will  come,  it  will  cer- 
tainly come,  the  age  of  the  perfection  of  man,  when 
man  will  do  good  because  it  is  good  and  will  not  do 
good  simply  because  arbitrary  rewards  have  been 
set  for  the  deed.  Go  thy  unnoticeable  pace,  Divine 
Providence,  but  do  not  let  me  doubt  Thee  because 
Thou  art  scarcely  noticeable,  do  not  let  me  doubt 
Thee  even  when  Thy  steps  seem  to  go  backward. 
It  is  not  true  that  the  shortest  line  is  always  the 
straightest !  " 


a64 


CHAPTER  XIV 

GERMAN   POETS   AND   THINKERS 

After  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  one-sided  reasoning  tendency  of  Enhghtenment 
was  met  by  a  new  tendency  which  might  be  desig- 
nated as  a  second  renaissance.  It  was  a  new  strug- 
gle of  personality  to  make  all  its  natural  powers 
and  instincts  effective  for  all,  freed  from  the  fetters 
of  dictation  as  well  as  from  all  the  rules  of  a  level- 
ing and  automatic  reason.  This  tendency  orig- 
inated with  Rousseau,  the  passionate  defender  of 
the  rights  of  the  heart  against  the  brain,  of  nature 
against  culture,  of  individual  freedom  against  the 
convention  of  society.  Many  were  the  echoes  wak- 
ened in  Germany  by  his  cry,  "  Back  to  nature !  " 
And  they  who  echoed  were  now  sensitive  souls, 
now  strugglers  of  genius,  and  again  pious  mystics. 
The  ferment  of  these  visionaries  of  genius,  at  first 
cloudy  and  confused,  later  clarified  to  a  purer  and 
more  beautiful  ideal  of  humanity.  The  first  proph- 
et of  this  new  ideal  was  Herder;  its  poetical  rep- 
resentatives were  Goethe  and  Schiller;  its  philo- 
sophic exponents  and  interpreters  were  Kant  and 
Fichte,  Schleiermacher  and  Hegel.  This  German 
revolution  of  the  spirit,  which  paralleled  the  French 

265 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Revolution  in  politics  and  was  at  least  equal  in  im- 
portance to  it,  as  far  as  the  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  Christianity  is  concerned, —  this  revolution 
of  the  human  spirit  I  cannot  undertake  to  describe 
in  detail  to-day.  I  must  confine  myself  to  a  short 
description  of  the  religious  views  of  these  German 
poets  and  thinkers  (for  the  details  see  my  Gesch- 
ichte der  Religionsphilosophie  seit  Spinoza,  3rd  ed- 
ition). 

Herder's  religious  views  underwent  various 
changes,  but  through  them  all  runs  the  one  thread 
of  protest  against  the  vulgar  Enlightenment, 
against  its  darkening  of  reason,  against  its  empty 
conceptual  formulas,  especially  against  its  arrogant 
and  senseless  view  of  history.  Everywhere  Her- 
der's interest  was  in  the  immediacy  of  man's  soul 
life,  in  the  fundamentality  and  peculiarity  of  the 
emotions  of  the  individual  as  of  peoples,  and  in 
the  naturalness  as  well  as  natural  growth  of  their 
forms  of  expression.  As  he  held  aloft  in  poetry 
the  native  force  and  beauty  of  the  folk-song  as 
against  the  artificial  rules  of  the  schools,  so,  in  re- 
ligion, he  gave  proper  value  to  the  power  and  beauty 
of  the  Bible  as  against  the  dogmatic  rules  of  the 
Church.  He  rejected  all  arbitrary  and  artificial  ra- 
tionalistic twisting  of  Bible  language  and  demanded, 
as  the  first  condition  of  a  religious  comprehension,  a 
loving  immersion  of  one's  own  self  in  the  spirit  of 
the  Oriental  poets  and  prophets,  with  particular  re- 
gard for  the  peculiarity  of  each  epoch  and  the  indi- 

266 


German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

viduality  of  each  writer.  In  his  book,  The  Spirit 
of  Hebrew  Poetry,  Herder  wakened  for  theologians, 
as  well  as  for  laymen,  the  sense  of  religious  truth 
and  poetic  beauty  contained  in  the  Bible,  indepen- 
dently of  all  dogma  and  criticism.  Herder's  writ- 
ings on  the  Gospels  display  his  genius,  containing 
results  which  show  that  his  keen  eye  had  seen,  ahead 
of  its  time,  the  peculiarity  of  each  of  the  Gospel 
writers.  In  his  judgment  of  the  Gospel  stories,  the 
assthetic  religious  sensing  of  their  ideal  content 
loomed  so  large  that,  in  very  joy  over  the  beauty 
of  the  stories,  he  could  never  bring  himself  to  a 
serious  testing  of  their  historical  reality.  It  cannot 
be  denied  that  this  romantic  weakness  considerably 
lessens  the  scientific  value  of  his  Bible  research. 
This  lack,  however,  is  far  outweighed  by  his  fine 
understanding  of  the  peculiar  spirit  of  the  Bible 
writers  as  inspired  witnesses  of  personal  revela- 
tions, of  experienced  religion.  By  this  means.  Her- 
der paved  the  way  for  the  genuine  historical,  scien- 
tific understanding  of  the  Bible,  which  is  equally  as 
far  removed  from  the  denial  of  Enlightenment  as 
from  a  blind  faith  in  authority.  For  the  under- 
standing of  extra-biblical  history  of  religion,  too, 
Herder  was  a  pioneer.  While  the  Enlightenment 
looked  upon  the  nature  mythologies  of  the  nature 
rehgions  as  valueless  superstitions,  Herder  was  the 
first  to  show  that  they  are  really  the  most  lively 
religious  consciousness  of  the  childhood  of  man, 
that  everywhere  in  nature,  wherever  life,  light,  and 

267 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

force  appeared,  there  a  revelation  of  deity  was  felt, 
there  its  order  and  creative  power  were  reverently 
seen.  As  the  song  is  the  mother-tongue  of  all 
poetry,  so  the  myths  and  legends  are  the  mother- 
tongue  of  all  rehgion.  This  correct  dictum  is  not 
highly  enough  regarded  even  to  this  day;  we  are 
still  too  deep  in  the  rationalism  which  condemns 
a  myth  rather  than  estimates  the  truth  of  the  myth, 
which  is  entirely  independent  of  the  problematic, 
historical  facts.  In  so  far,  I  think,  that  even  to-day 
we  ought  to  go  to  school  to  Herder.  While 
Herder  had  much  friendly  patience  with  the  myth- 
ical parts  of  historical  religion,  yet  the  transforma- 
tion of  these  mythical  popular  legends  and  notions 
into  dogmatic  tenets  was  equally  obnoxious  to  him. 
In  the  Church  dogma  he  could  see  only  arbitrary 
doctrinal  opinion,  ''  a  rag-fair  of  old  phrases," 
which  have  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  religion  as  a 
matter  of  the  spirit,  which  are  the  grave  of  re- 
ligion. By  reason  of  his  own  peculiarity  and  the 
circumstances  of  his  time,  we  can  well  understand 
how  his  historical  sense  failed  him  all  at  once.  The 
consequence  was  that  he  did  not  enter  deeply  enough 
into  the  historical  peculiarity  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion, and,  therefore,  that  he  had  too  little  direct 
effect  on  the  further  formation  of  theology.  For 
him,  Christianity  was  from  the  beginning  only  pure 
humanitarianism  in  the  sense  in  which  a  child  of 
the  eighteenth  century  understood  it ;  with  its  moral 
optimism  it  was  difficult  to  harmonize  the  Biblical 

268 


German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

Church  thought  of  sin  and  redemption.  In  this  re- 
spect Kant  and  Schleiermacher  were  deeper  than 
Herder. 

Like  Herder,  and  yet  more  than  he,  Goethe  and 
Schiller  stood  beyond  the  contradiction  of  Enlight- 
enment and  Church  faith.  Because  of  its  super- 
ficiality and  its  vulgar  utilitarian  spirit,  they  heart- 
ily despised  Enlightenment,  while  toward  the 
Church  faith  they  felt  themselves  entirely  free. 
Drawing  from  the  depths  of  their  own  genius,  in- 
spired and  fructified  by  the  manifold  culture  ele- 
ments of  their  rich  and  active  period,  they  created  a 
new  ideal  of  humanity,  one  which  in  its  form  was 
far  removed  from  the  ecclesiastical  but  which,  at 
the  same  time,  by  its  purely  human  truth  and  by 
its  high  moral  purity,  presented  itself  as  the  product 
of  the  Protestant  Christian  spirit  and  was  mightily 
effective  in  its  later  development. 

It  cannot  be  glossed  over  that  Goethe  repeatedly 
confessed  himself  to  be  "  a  decided  non-Christian  " 
and  that  he  expressed  himself  repeatedly  and  with 
perfect  frankness  on  the  things  which  separated 
him  from  Church  Christianity, —  in  a  letter  to  Lav- 
ater,  as  follows : 

"  I  yield  you  the  joy  of  enjoying  everything  in 
one  individual;  and  with  the  impossibility  that  one 
individual  can  do  enough  for  you  it  is  glorious  that 
there  remains  one  picture  from  ancient  times  into 
which  you  can  carry  over  your  all  and  mirror  your- 
self in  it,  that  you  can  worship  yourself.     But  I 

269 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

cannot  call  it  other  than  an  injustice  and  a  robbery 
that  you  pluck  out  the  most  precious  feathers  of 
the  myriad  birds  under  heaven  as  though  they  were 
usurped  to  decorate  exclusively  your  bird  of  para- 
dise; this  it  is  which  necessarily  aggravates  us  and 
seems  unbearable  to  us,  who  have  given  ourselves 
over  to  every  truth  revealed  to  and  through  men 
and,  as  the  sons  of  God,  in  ourselves  and  in  all 
of  His  children,  worship  truth."  Further,  "  You 
hold  the  Gospel  as  it  stands  to  be  divine  truth;  not 
even  a  voice  from  heaven  could  convince  me  that  a 
woman  without  a  man  could  conceive  and  that  a 
dead  man  could  rise  from  the  grave.  Rather  I  hold 
these  to  be  blasphemies  against  the  great  God  and 
His  revelation  in  nature.  You  find  nothing  more 
beautiful  than  the  Gospels.  I  find  a  thousand  writ- 
ten pages,  old  and  new,  from  the  hand  of  God- 
gifted  men,  equally  as  beautiful  and  indispensable 
to  humanity." 

Goethe,  you  see,  was  offended  by  the  counter-nat- 
uralness of  the  Biblical  Church  belief  in  miracles 
and  by  the  narrow  exclusiveness  of  the  idolatry  of 
a  single  individual;  in  short,  he  was  offended  by 
what  we  might  call  the  mythological  part  of  the  tra- 
ditional Church  belief.  Did  he,  therefore,  in  his 
faith  reject  its  religious  kernel?  In  no  wise! 
Goethe  was  far  removed  from  that.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  protested  against  the  mythical  form  of 
the  Church  faith  because  it  seemed  too  small,  too 
narrow   for  his  belief  in  the  eternal  omnipresent 

270 


German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

revelation  of  God  in  nature  and  history.  Let  us 
recall  his  beautiful  words:  "The  acknowledg- 
ment of  God  wherever  and  however  He  may  reveal 
Himself,  that  is  actually  bliss  on  earth !  "  He  rec- 
ognizes the  divine  power  spread  through  all  life 
in  nature;  he  finds  eternal  love  everywhere  active. 
In  human  history  he  recognizes  the  continuous  rev- 
elation of  God  who  did  not  retire  to  rest  on  the 
sixth  day  of  creation,  but  is  as  continuously  active 
as  on  the  first  day.  Especially  in  human  product 
of  the  highest  kind,  in  each  great  thought  which 
bears  fruit,  he  recognizes  gifts  from  above,  real 
children  of  God  whom  man  ought  to  receive  and 
honor  gratefully,  in  that  he  holds  himself  to  be 
the  instrument  of  a  higher  world  government,  a 
worthy  vessel  for  the  reception  of  divine  influence. 
In  general,  this  is  the  nature  of  religion  according 
to  Goethe's  beautiful  characterization:  a  grateful 
yielding  to  the  divine  source  of  all  truth  and  good- 
ness surpassing  all  our  concepts,  elevation  to  it  with 
the  request  for  a  pure  heart  and  large  thoughts. 
Concerning  the  peculiarity  of  the  Christian  religion, 
he  gives  us  some  fine  thoughts;  in  Wilhelm  Meis- 
ter's  Apprenticeship,  he  speaks  of  three  kinds  of 
reverence  which  religion  ought  to  awaken  in  man: 
reverence  for  that  which  is  over  us,  that  which  is 
about  us,  and  that  which  is  under  us.  Christianity 
achieves  the  last,  which  is  the  most  difficult,  in  so 
far  as  it  acknowledges  lowliness  and  poverty,  suf- 
fering and  death  to  be  divine,  and  is  able  to  revere 

2/1 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

and  come  to  love  even  sin  itself  and  crime  not  as 
hindrances  but  rather  as  aids  to  holiness.  "  Since 
this  object  has  once  been  reached,  humanity  never 
can  go  back  and  it  may  be  said  that  the  Christian 
religion  can  never  disappear  again ;  since  it  has  once 
divinely  embodied  itself,  it  can  never  again  be  dis- 
solved." True,  he  does  add  that  the  highest  re- 
ligion comes  out  of  those  three  reverences  only 
when  man  reverences  himself  as  the  best  that  God 
and  nature  have  produced.  To  sum  it  all  up  we 
may  say,  Goethe  sees  the  peculiar  merit  of  Christi- 
anity to  be  that  it  has  helped  man  to  a  clear  and 
permanent  certainty  of  his  own  spiritual  freedom, 
dignity,  and  sublimity  as  against  the  accidents  of 
the  sense  world.  But  he  knows,  too,  that  this  self- 
estimate  of  the  spirit  can  only  be  bought  at  the  price 
of  the  self-denial  of  his  finite  self-quaHty.  "  For, 
so  long  as  thou  hast  not  that  Die  and  be!  thou  art 
only  a  sorry  guest  in  this  dark  world."  Therefore, 
he  bows  in  reverence  before  the  moral  sublimity 
which  emanates  from  the  person  of  Christ  in  the 
Gospels  as  the  most  divine  fashion  in  which  the  di- 
vine has  ever  appeared  on  earth.  Finally,  for  his 
good  Protestant  world-view,  his  hearty  sympathy 
with  Luther  is  characteristic.  Shortly  before  his 
death  he  said  to  Eckermann :  "  We  do  not  know,  in 
general,  what  we  owe  to  Luther  and  the  Reforma- 
tion. We  are  free  from  the  fetters  of  clerical 
narrow-mindedness,  we  have  become  able  to  go 
back  to  the  source  and  to  grasp  Christianity  in  its 

272 


German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

purity.  Again  we  have  the  courage  to  stand  firmly 
on  God's  earth  and  sense  ourseh^es  in  our  God-given 
human  nature.  Though  the  culture  of  the  spirit 
may  ever  progress,  natural  science  grow  in  extent 
and  depth,  and  the  human  spirit  widen  as  it  will, 
it  will  never  go  beyond  the  sublimity  and  moral  cul- 
ture of  Christianity  as  it  shines  through  the  Gospels. 
But  from  a  Christianity  of  word  and  belief  it  will 
come  ever  more  and  more  to  a  Christianity  of  atti- 
tude and  of  deed."  —  Such  was  Goethe's  confes- 
sion at  the  close  of  his  rich  life. 

Schiller's  attitude  to  religion  and  Church  was 
essentially  the  same  as  Goethe's.  Because  beneath 
the  garb  of  religions  the  religion  itself  lies,  there- 
fore he  did  not  profess  any  of  the  Church  religions, 
on  acount  of  religion.  His  religion  is  moral  ideal- 
ism, but  not  only  in  Kant's  sense  as  obedience  to  the 
categorical  imperative  of  duty,  but  also  as  the  cer- 
tainty of  the  eternal  truth  and  world-conquering 
power  of  the  divinely  good  as  felt  in  the  heart. 
According  to  Schiller,  God  should  not  remain  for  us 
a  commanding  will  beyond,  but  we  are  to  take  Him 
up  in  our  will,  to  feel  Him  as  our  possession,  as  the 
bliss-producing  and  freeing  power  of  elevation  be- 
yond the  anxieties  of  earth  into  the  ideal  kingdom. 
This  carrying  of  the  divine  within,  this  humaniza- 
tion  of  it,  Schiller  regarded  as  the  differentiating 
advantage  of  Christianity ;  its  peculiar  nature  he 
characterized  with  rare  understanding  in  a  letter  to 
Goethe : 

273 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

*'  In  the  Christian  rehgion  I  find  the  tendency  to 
the  highest  and  noblest  and  the  various  appearances 
of  it  in  life  seem  to  me  so  hateful  and  distasteful 
merely  because  they  are  unsuccessful  representa- 
tions of  that  highest.  If  one  seeks  to  cling  to  the 
actual  characteristic  feature  of  Christianity,  which 
separates  it  from  all  monotheistic  religion,  it  is  to 
be  found  in  nothing  other  than  the  abrogation  of 
the  law,  the  Kantian  imperative,  in  the  place  of 
which  Christianity  would  have  free  incHnation.  In 
its  pure  form,  therefore,  it  is  the  representation  of 
beautiful  morality  or  the  incarnation  of  holiness 
and,  in  this  sense,  the  unique  aesthetic  religion."  In 
this  sense  Schiller's  poem,  ''  Ideal  and  Life  "  may 
be  taken  as  the  most  profound  paraphrase  of  the 
fundamental  idea  contained  in  the  Christian  doctrine 
of  salvation.  Recall  that  beautiful  distich  in  which 
Schiller  yields  the  palm  of  victory  to  Christianity: 

"  Religion  of  the  cross,  thou  alone  dost  weave  in 

one 
Wreath  the  double  palm,  humility  and  strength." 

Schiller's  moral  ideal  originated  in  the  philos- 
ophy of  Kant,  that  foundation  of  modern  German 
philosophy.  Before  Kant  the  Enlighteners  proudly 
boasted  of  their  reason  and  their  freedom.  What 
true  reason  and  true  freedom  actually  were,  that  was 
a  matter  about  which  those  enlightened  were  not 
very  clear.  They  had  confused  the  reason  with  the 
temporary  opinion  of  the  naive  human  understand- 

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German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

ing,  and  freedom  they  had  confused  with  the  un- 
controlled desire  of  an  undisciplined  eudaemonistic 
will.  Then  Kant  came  and  showed  that  he  alone 
is  truly  enlightened  who  knows  how  to  use  his 
understanding  properly  according  to  the  laws  pecu- 
liar to  the  thinking  spirit ;  that  he  is  not  free  who 
wishes  to  place  his  revolutionary  license  in  the  stead 
of  whatever  exists,  but  he  alone  is  free  who  rises 
by  true  reform  of  thinking  to  moral  self-decision 
according  to  the  inner  laws  of  reason.  Kant 
worked  out  these  inner  laws  of  reasoning  thought 
and  will  in  his  Critiques  of  pure  and  practical 
reason  and  the  power  of  judgment.  In  the  first 
he  showed  that  all  our  knowledge  is  bound  to  the 
material  given  to  us  by  sense  perception,  that  the 
formation  of  this  chaotic  material  into  the  ordered 
world  of  our  consciousness  is  entirely  a  matter  of 
our  self-activity,  whereby  our  spirit  is  ever  bound 
to  its  original,  peculiar  forms  of  thinking,  time  and 
place,  and  to  the  forms  of  thinking  of  the  logical 
categories.  Upon  the  original  innate  necessity  of 
these  forms  of  viewing  and  thinking  rests  the  truth 
of  all  our  know^ledge,  which  has  its  limitation,  hov - 
ever,  in  that  those  forms  are  only  valid  in  their  ap- 
plication to  temporal  and  spatial  experience,  to  the 
phenomena  of  our  consciousness,  —  not  to  the 
"  things-in-themselves "  which  are  at  the  bottom 
of  all  those  phenomena.  Therefrom  Kant  con- 
cludes that  all  speculation  concerning  the  things 
beyond    experience    is    a    flight    beyond    the    lim- 

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The  Development  of  Christianity 

its  of  our  knowledge,  and  therefore  can  yield  no 
real  knowledge.  In  this  way,  the  proofs  of  the 
existence  of  God  and  of  immortality  given  by  the 
philosophy  of  Wolff  lose  their  power.  The  self- 
certainty  of  their  dogmatic  presupposition,  upon 
which  the  self-satisfaction  of  Enlightenment  mainly 
depended,  is  thus  destroyed.  For  this  reason  Kant 
was  given  the  name,  "  the  destroyer."  This  abroga- 
tion of  all  pseudo-knowledge,  according  to  Kant's 
purpose,  was  not  to  serve  doubt,  denial  and  dis- 
belief, but  on  the  contrary  was  to  prepare  the 
ground  for  a  deeper  and  better  foundation  of  faith. 
The  latter  does  not  lie  in  the  theoretical  but  in  the 
practical  reason,  or  in  conscience  whose  feeling  of 
duty  is  the  one  undeceiving,  undoubtable  certainty 
of  anything  beyond  sense.  Naturally  the  content 
of  practical  reason  is,  in  the  beginning,  only  the 
unconditioned,  formal  demand  to  act  as  all  others 
should  act  or  treat  each  man  as  an  end  in  himself, 
and  not  merely  as  a  means  to  an  end.  From  this 
fundamental  fact  or  fundamental  demand  of  our 
moral  reason,  there  results  a  series  of  further  conse- 
quences which  form  the  content  of  our  moral 
reasoning  faith.  First,  ought  presupposes  able, 
hence  the  freedom  of  our  moral  self-decision ;  again, 
the  fulfilment  of  the  moral  law  of  reason  finds 
in  the  desires  of  our  sensual  nature  an  obstacle 
which  can  never  be  fully  overcome.  Therefore, 
within  a  limited  period  of  time,  it  can  never  be  fully 
realized;  hence  the  concKision  that  there  is  an  un- 

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limited  period  of  time  in  which  we  may  strive  for 
that  perfection  which  presupposes  the  unHmited 
continuance  of  pure  personal  life,  without  which  we 
could  not  strive  for  perfection  ad  infinitum;  finally, 
the  moral  task  can  only  consist  in  the  highest  good, 
that  is,  in  the  harmonious  union  of  happiness  and 
worthiness  of  joy,  or  virtue;  more  popularly  ex- 
pressed, in  the  harmonious  connection  of  the  world 
of  the  senses  with  the  world  of  morals.  The  ability 
to  bring  about  such  a  harmonious  connection  is  en- 
tirely beyond  our  powers.  If  it  is  to  be  possible, 
however,  (and  it  is  demanded  as  our  highest  task) 
then  it  is  only  thinkable  under  the  presupposition 
of  the  existence  of  a  God  who  is  almighty,  omnis- 
cient, and  just  causation,  possessing  the  ability  to 
put  the  world  of  sense  and  the  world  of  morals, 
virtue  and  happiness,  into  a  harmonious  unity. 
These  demands  of  practical  reason  do  not  base  an 
actual  knowledge  which  admits  of  logical  proof, 
but  a  belief  which  is  morally  based  and  adequate 
for  practical  living.  We  ought  to  live  as  though 
there  were  a  God  and  an  immortality.  We  ought 
to  make  this  practical  belief  the  permanent  norm 
of  our  practical  living.  This  moral  reasoning  faith 
which  regards  all  duties  from  the  viewpoint  of 
divine  commands  and  finds  God  the  author  of  the 
moral  law  and  guarantee  of  its  realization  in  the 
highest  good,  —  that  is  the  kernel  of  all  religion, 
to  which  the  statutory  doctrines  of  the  various 
Church  religions  are  related  merely  as  garment- 

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The  Development  of  Christianity 

forms  (vehicles),  as  means  of  introduction  neces- 
sary and  useful  in  their  time,  as  shells  and  supports 
which  became  superfluous  and  obstructive  as  soon 
as  men  rose  to  a  consciousness  of  their  true  human 
dignity.  Until  that  time,  the  traditional  Church 
teachings  should  be  interpreted  as  allegories  of 
moral  truths.  Kant  himself  gives  a  sample  in  his 
book  on  Religion  within  the  Limits  of  Reason. 
That,  too,  has  the  defects  of  its  period,  but  it  is  im- 
portant enough,  and  contains  enough  profound 
thoughts  to  deserve  the  attention  of  the  philosophers 
and  historians  of  religion  of  all  time. 

Kant  starts  out  from  the  same  deep  opposition 
which  governs  all  of  his  moral  philosophy ;  it  is  the 
opposition  of  the  moral  law  of  reason  to  the  natural 
sensual  and  selfish  desires  of  man,  which  he  desig- 
nates as  a  radical  evil  because  of  its  opposition  to 
its  reasonable  purpose.  It  is  radical  evil  in  so  far 
as  it  must  be  presupposed  before  all  conscious,  free 
activity  of  the  will,  for  man  finds  that  opposition  as 
a  given  fact  within  him  from  the  beginning.  This 
is  close  to  what  the  Church  means  by  the  doctrine 
of  inherited  sin,  only  that  according  to  Kant  there 
can  be  no  thought  of  a  historical  inheritance  of  a 
first  sin  from  Adam.  Such  a  thing  cannot  exist 
in  the  moral  realm,  but  it  is  a  natural  condition 
which  cannot  be  other  but  which  will  not  remain 
because  it  contradicts  the  idea  of  man  himself.  It 
is  the  same  thing  that  Zwingli  called  the  natural 
infirmities  of  man.     With  this  presupposition  of  the 

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German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

naturally  bad,  man  cannot  become  good  by  any 
merely  gradual  reform  of  his  morals,  but  a  revolu- 
tion of  his  entire  manner  of  thinking;  a  new  birth, 
alone,  can  complete  it.  But  how  can  one  arrive  at 
that?  Kant  says  it  can  only  be  by  a  deed  of  indi- 
vidual freedom,  for  each  one  must  make  himself 
good;  but  it  is  helpfully  effective  to  visualize  the 
ideal  in  a  historical  example  of  such  remarkable 
moral  sublimity  as  was  furnished  by  Jesus.  Hence, 
we  may  regard  Jesus  as  though  in  him  the  ideal  of 
the  good  had  appeared,  and  that  without  holding 
him  to  be  anything  more  than  a  naturally  born  man. 
The  question  whether  the  historical  Jesus  fully 
corresponded  to  the  ideal  or  not,  is  a  question  which 
it  is  neither  possible  nor  necessary  for  us  to  answer ; 
for  in  any  event  the  actual  object  of  our  religious 
belief  is  not  the  historical  man,  of  whom  we  have 
only  external  information,  but  the  object  of  our 
religious  belief  is  the  ideal  of  a  humanity  pleasing 
to  God,  which,  because  it  is  based  in  our  super- 
sensible nature,  may  be  thought  of  under  the  sym- 
bolical image  of  an  ideal  son  of  God  coming  from 
heaven.  Whoever  believes  in  this  ideal  Son  of 
God,  to  which  Jesus  is  related  as  the  visible  example 
—  in  other  words,  whoever  takes  the  moral  idea  of 
the  good  into  his  spirit  and  suffers  himself  to  be 
governed  by  it,  is  just  in  the  eyes  of  the  Searcher 
of  Hearts,  that  is,  he  is  as  he  ought  to  be  because 
the  good  attitude  of  the  heart  makes  good  all  pres- 
ent defects  in  the  conduct  of  life.     The  guilt  of  the 

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The  Development  of  Christianity 

past  need  not  worry  one  in  whom  the  good  attitude 
has  come  to  hfe,  because  the  new  man  in  us  vicari- 
ously suffers  for  the  guilt  of  the  former  man  in  the 
natural  pain  of  self-conquest  and  patience.  There- 
in consists  the  simple  truth  of  the  Church  doctrine 
of  the  vicarious  merit  of  the  Son  of  God;  but  in  the 
exact  sense  of  the  words,  according  to  which  guilt 
is  wiped  away  by  the  suffering  of  another,  it  is  not 
correct,  while  in  the  sense  that  it  is  the  Son  of  God 
in  us  who  ever  anew  makes  good  vicariously  the 
failure  of  the  man  in  us,  it  is  correct.  Certainly 
this  is  a  profound  thought ! 

Thus  you  see  that  Kant  throughout  sought  to 
interpret  the  historical  and  mythical  parts  of  Church 
faith  as  practical,  valuable  symbols  of  ideal  truths; 
the  source  and  confirmation  of  these  ideal  truths, 
however,  is  not  to  be  found  outside  of  us  in  some 
holy  books,  but  inside  of  us  in  the  moral  experiences 
of  our  own  pious  natures.  The  mystics  of  all  times 
have  taught  the  same  thing.  Kant  and  his  philo- 
sophic successors  have  only  formulated  the  unde- 
cided emotions  and  views  of  the  mystics  in  con- 
crete concepts  and  deduced  them  from  the  nature  of 
our  moral  consciousness. 

Only  a  few  words  to-day  concerning  Fichte: 
Johann  Gottlieb  Fichte  typically  represented  the 
movements  of  the  spirit  of  his  age  in  the  Protean 
changes  in  his  philosophy.  He  started  from  the 
absolute  freedom  of  the  ego,  which  has  no  limita- 
tions outside  of  itself  but  its  own  self -activities,  sets 

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German  Poets  and  Thinkers 

up  the  limits  of  the  not-I,  the  object,  thus  becoming 
itself  the  creator  of  its  own  world.  Things  are 
what  we  make  them  to  be.  Nature  is  nothing  of 
itself;  it  is  merely  the  means  which  the  I  posits  for 
its  free  activity,  the  material  of  our  moral  action. 
The  object  of  this  action  is  the  realization  of  free- 
dom in  a  moral  order  of  souls,  in  the  mutual  inter- 
action of  free  personalities.  Alongside  this  moral 
world-order  there  is  no  longer  any  room  for  an 
extra-worldly  God.  In  this  order,  moral  action 
finishes  within  itself.  At  this  extreme  edge  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  I,  Fichte  could  not  remain.  He 
swung  back  into  a  religious  mysticism  which  in  the 
end  stands  closer  to  Spinoza  than  to  Kant.  In 
Fichte's  writings  of  about  1800,  it  is  the  one  divine 
life  and  light  which  brings  itself  in  the  realm  of 
finite  souls  to  its  manifold  broken  phenomenon. 
Accordingly,  religion  is  no  longer  merely  the  moral 
action  of  individual  men,  but  it  consists  in  the  mysti- 
cal view  of  the  world  as  the  divided  phenomenon  of 
the  one  Divine  Being.  It  is  the  feeling  that  we  are 
one  with  the  divine  life,  it  is  the  immersion  of  our 
self  in  God.  Fichte's  moral  idealism  maintained 
itself  even  in  this  mystical  God-union  in  so  far  as 
he  does  not  permit  this  highest  love  of  God  to  end 
in  a  mere  inactive  contemplation,  but  he  takes  it  to 
be  the  source  of  a  joyous  and  active  love  of  men, 
out  of  which  moral  action  flows  as  peacefully  and 
as  certainly  as  does  the  light  from  the  sun.  There- 
upon follows  the  close  attachment  to  Christianity 

281 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

according  to  John.  For  Fichte,  the  historical  part 
expressly  becomes  the  means  and  the  way  to  that 
which  is  alone  beatifying  in  religion,  the  meta- 
physical, the  belief  in  the  supersensible  nature  of 
God  as  the  eternal  principle  of  all  light  and  life  in 
the  world,  of  all  truth  and  goodness  in  men.  For 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  the  kingdom  of  the  free- 
dom of  souls  in  God,  and  Christ  was  its  first  citizen. 


282 


CHAPTER  XV 

.  ROMANTICISM,   SPECULATION,   AND  HISTORICAL 
CRITICISM 

At  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  comes 
the  movement  which  we  usually  designate  as 
Romanticism.  It  is  not  easy  to  describe  its  nature 
in  brief,  because  its  Protean  changes  swerved  from 
freest  subjectivism  to  most  slavish  faith  in  author- 
ity, from  unbridled  phantastry  to  scientific  histori- 
cal research.  It  is  not  even  easy  to  mark  its 
beginning.  The  roots  reach  back  into  that  epoch 
of  genius,  the  seventh  decade  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, when  the  Sturm  und  Drang  spirits  rose  against 
the  despotism  of  a  leveling  understanding  to  defend 
the  rights  of  individual  feelings  and  fancy  un- 
trammeled  in  creation.  Thence  came  Herder, 
thence,  too,  the  young  Schiller.  With  these  great 
men,  however,  the  unclear  ferment  ripened  in  ma- 
ture age  to  the  fragrant  spirit  of  a  noble  humanitari- 
anism.  Goethe  found  in  the  study  of  Spinoza  and 
natural  science  the  governing  measure  of  his  pas- 
sionate heart ;  and  Schiller  learned  from  Kant  that 
true  freedom  consists  in  devotion  to  the  moral  ideal. 
Both  Goethe  and  Schiller  found  their  ideal  types  of 

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The  Development  of  Christianity 

beauty  in  the  classical  world  of  Greece.  Thus 
there  was  a  clarification  and  naturally,  also,  a  limi- 
tation of  the  struggle  for  freedom  on  the  part  of  the 
strong  souls.  But  in  the  younger  generation  the 
struggle  broke  out  anew,  so  that  more  passionately 
and  more  consciously  than  before,  they  struggled 
against  Enlightenment  and  reason,  rules,  customs, 
and  order.  Thus  arose  what  is  usually  called  the 
Romantic  School.  It  differs  not  only  from  En- 
lightenment but  also  from  Classicism  by  raising  the 
license  of  poetic  fancy  to  the  ruling  law  of  thought 
and  life;  their  prototypes  were  not  in  the  clearness 
and  perfection  of  form  of  the  classic  world,  but  in 
the  marvelous  fable  world  and  moon-illumined 
magical  nights  of  the  middle  ages.  Romanticism 
leaned  upon  the  idealistic  philosophy  of  Fichte, 
wherein  the  construction  of  the  world  was  the  act 
of  the  free-creating  power  of  imagination  of  the  I 
(at  bottom  itself  nothing  more  than  a  grandiose 
piece  of  concept  poetry,  the  example  of  romantic 
intermingling  of  poetry-making  and  of  thinking.) 
As  we  have  seen,  with  Fichte  this  tendency  swung 
back  to  a  mystical  pantheism,  wherein  the  individual 
I  is  made  to  sink  back  into  the  all-Hfe  of  God. 
Romanticism,  too,  felt  the  need  of  filling  the  empty 
freedom  of  the  I  with  objective  content,  of  binding 
it  to  some  generally  valid  power.  Thus  it  was  that 
the  former  turned  to  religion  and  the  Church,  while 
the  latter  took  up  the  study  of  history,  the  past  of 
their  own  people,  and  the  de-velopment  of  civiliza- 

284 


Historical  Criticism 

tion  among  men.  The  principal  representatives  of 
the  religious  movement  are  Novalis  and  Schleier- 
macher. 

With  Novalis  (real  name  Frederick  von  Harden- 
berg) the  characteristically  romantic  intermingling 
of  poetry,  philosophy,  and  religion  is  peculiarly 
clear.  Fichte's  ethical  idealism  was  transformed 
by  him  into  a  ''  magical  idealism."  The  genius  / 
feels  itself  to  be  a  part  and  image  of  the  divine  /  and 
permits  itself,  like  the  other,  to  dispose  of  nature 
with  unlimited  freedom.  According  to  Novalis, 
religion  arises  by  the  heart  making  itself  its  ideal 
object  and  feeling  itself  to  be  the  organ  of  the  di- 
vine. All  phenomena  of  the  world  can  become 
mediums  of  divine  revelation  and  the  Christian  one 
mediator  be  supplemented  by  the  ancient  many 
mediators.  The  history  of  Christ,  Novalis  says,  is 
just  as  certainly  a  poem  as  it  is  history,  a  world- 
historic,  symbolical  drama,  full  of  tragedy  and  un- 
fathomable woe.  Later  he  says  not  the  Bible  but 
the  Holy  Ghost  ought  to  be  our  teacher,  and  every 
sermon  ought  to  be  an  inspiration  of  genius.  He 
esteemed  the  middle  ages  to  be  the  golden  age  of 
Christianity;  it  was  the  cult  of  Mary  which  appealed 
to  him  particularly.  At  the  same  time  he  hoped 
for  a  future  rejuvenation  of  religion  at  which  time 
it  would  become  united  with  the  highest  culture  of 
the  world.  Romanticism  with  Novalis  thus  sways 
between  reaction  and  progress.  With  Friedrich 
Schlegel,    however,    the  uncontrolled    striving    for 

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The  Development  of  Christianity 

emancipation  from  morals  and  discipline  went  to  the 
other  extreme.  He  sought  rescue  from  moral  ship- 
wreck in  the  safe  harbor  of  the  Catholic  Church. 
Only  with  Schleiermacher  did  the  excess  of  ro- 
mantic emotion  unite  with  the  clarity  of  scientific 
thinking  and  the  earnestness  of  moral  volition  in 
such  happy  fashion  that  he  could  become  the  re- 
newer  of  Protestant  theology.  Schleiermacher  was 
born  in  a  pious  minister's  house.  He  was  educated 
in  the  Herrnhut  circle,  completing  his  studies  by  the 
addition  of  the  old  and  modern  philosophers.  As 
a  young  minister  at  Berlin,  he  put  himself  in  touch 
with  the  Romantic  group  whose  opposition  to  En- 
lightenment he  shared  without  dropping  into  their 
fantastic  excesses.  In  every  way  he  was  peculiarly 
fitted  to  be  the  attorney  for  religion  before  the 
cultured  among  those  who  despise  it.  In  his 
speeches  written  for  that  purpose,  he  sought  to  find 
for  religion  a  pecuhar  place  within  our  souls,  inde- 
pendent of  knowledge,  as  of  moral  action,  namely 
in  the  immediate  feeling  for  the  infinite  in  the 
finite,  or  in  the  view  of  the  universe  in  the  sensa- 
tion of  the  world-spirit  in  its  manifold  revelations 
through  the  phenomena  of  the  world.  Schleier- 
macher speaks  with  reverence  of  Spinoza,  who  had 
been  full  of  religion  and  full  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  for 
it  does  not  depend  on  the  concept  which  one  makes 
of  God,  theistic  or  pantheistic,  but  it  depends  upon 
feeling  God  in  one's  heart.  So,  too,  the  immortal- 
ity of  religion  is  not  a  problematical  future,  but 

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Historical  Criticism 

the  inner  experience  of  the  union  of  the  finite  with 
the  infinite,  the  being  eternal  in  each  moment.  Al- 
together a  system  of  teachable  paragraphs  does  not 
make  the  character  of  a  rehgion;  its  mode  of  feel- 
ing is  decisive.  Hence  the  difference  between  true 
and  false  is  not  applicable  in  judging  a  religion; 
each  religion  is  true  so  far  as  it  grows  purely  out  of 
emotion  and  has  not  yet  been  formulated  in  con- 
cepts. Each,  however,  must  suffer  the  other  modes 
of  pious  feeling  alongside  itself.  As  a  thing  in- 
finite, religion  has  its  being  only  in  the  multiplicity 
of  individual  appearances,  thus,  in  the  various  posi- 
tive religions,  not  in  any  so-called  natural  religion, 
which  after  all  is  no  reality  but  a  mere  abstraction. 
Each  positive  religion  rests  upon  a  fundamental 
idea  which  bears  some  close  relation  to  a  funda- 
mental fact.  Both,  idea  and  fact,  are  always  at- 
tached but  must  never  be  regarded  as  identical. 
The  fundamental  idea  of  Christianity,  according 
to  Schleiermacher,  is  the  abrogation  of  that  de- 
struction which  consists  in  separation  from  God,  an 
abrogation  brought  about  by  mediatorial  persons 
and  institutions  scattered  broadcast  among  men ;  by 
these  mediators,  the  union  of  the  finite  with  God, 
the  reconciliation  of  those  separated  from  God  is 
brought  about.  Among  these  mediatorial  figures 
belongs  Jesus  Christ,  for  in  him  the  consciousness 
of  the  necessity  of  salvation  and  of  his  own  power 
to  impart  it  was  present  with  special  force  and 
clearness.     But  in  the  last  speech  Schleiermacher 

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The  Development  of  Christianity 

adds,  Jesus  himself  had  never  declared  that  he  was 
the  only  mediator,  neither  had  his  disciples  sought 
to  set  bounds  to  the  unlimited  freedom  of  the  reve- 
lations of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  the  Bible  does  not 
forbid  any  other  book  also  to  become  a  Bible;  al- 
together, Christianity  did  not  wish  to  be  the  unique 
figure  of  religion,  it  scorned  the  limitation  of  sole 
rulership  and  would  be  glad  to  see  another  more 
powerful  and  more  beautiful  figure  of  religion 
grow  up  by  its  side. 

Schleiermacher  wrote  that  way  in  his  Speeches, 
1799,  but  differently  in  his  Dogmatics,  1821.  In 
the  latter  he  remained  true  to  his  idealism  in  so 
far  as  he  did  not  represent  the  Christian  faith  to 
be  a  sum  of  traditional  doctrine  but  a  personal  con- 
tent of  our  Christian  consciousness  with  which  the 
remaining  content  of  our  reasoning  spirit  had  to 
harmonize.  But  in  the  two  decades  after  the 
Speeches,  Schleiermacher  had  passed  through  the 
changes  which  the  time-consciousness  had  under- 
gone; he  had  sloughed  off  the  one-sided  subjec- 
tivism of  the  Romanticists,  his  entire  mode  of  think- 
ing was  more  closely  attuned  to  the  historical  faith 
common  to  the  Christian  Church.  Hence,  the  form 
of  his  dogmatics  was  presented  in  a  fashion  border- 
ing more  closely  on  the  Church  manner  of  expres- 
sion. As  for  content,  it  stood  more  decidedly  on 
the  ground  of  the  positive  Christian  belief  and 
sought  to  ally  it  in  closest  possible  fashion  with 
idealistic  philosophy.     Religion  is  therein  no  longer 

288 


Historical  Criticism 

called  feeling  in  general,  but  confined  to  the  abso- 
lute feeling  of  dependence.  The  difference  between 
God  and  the  world  is  made  more  marked;  God  is 
the  unity  to  the  multiplicity  of  the  finite  world; 
He  is  eternal  omnipresent  causation,  upon  which 
all  spiritual  and  temporal  causes,  in  their  condi- 
tioned activities,  are  unconditionally  dependent,  and 
which  reveals  itself  through  our  pious  feelings  in 
various  forms,  expressed  by  us  in  symbolic  con- 
ceptions of  divine  attributes.  Perfection  is  es- 
pecially conceded  to  Christianity.  It  is  no  longer 
placed  on  the  plane  with  other  religions.  He 
[Schleiermacher]  no  longer  maintains  that  it  will 
be  surpassed  by  future  better  religions,  but  he  ac- 
knowledges that  it  has  a  unique,  unsurpassable 
value.  This  is  based  upon  the  supernaturalness 
of  its  origin  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  The 
way  in  which  Schleiermacher  sought  to  harmonize 
his  philosophic  conviction  with  this  concession  to  the 
Church  supernaturalism  (for  that  is  what  it  is)] 
is  just  as  full  of  genius  as  it  is  problematical. 

Schleiermacher  begins  that  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness moves  between  the  contradictories,  sin 
and  grace.  The  former  consists  in  an  obstacle  to 
our  higher  self-consciousness  or  God-consciousness 
by  the  sense  or  world-consciousness.  Grace  is  the 
release  from  that  obstacle  by  strengthening  and 
permitting  the  God-consciousness  to  rule.  Natural- 
ly, these  are  the  same  two  conditions  which  Spinoza 
described  in  his  ethics  as  the  opposition  between 

289 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

servitudo  and  libertas  humana,  and  with  Kant  they 
reappear  in  the  opposition  between  the  faculty  of 
desiring  the  lower,  sensual  as  against  the  higher, 
reasoning  things.  But,  inasmuch  as  these  are  mere- 
ly the  two  sides  of  human  nature  in  general,  the 
philosophers  think  of  the  transition  from  the  first 
to  the  second  condition  as  a  natural  turn-about,  a 
transition  from  the  lower  to  the  higher  plane  of  life, 
toward  which  our  human  nature  had  a  tendency 
from  the  beginning  and  which,  therefore,  occurs 
in  the  individual  by  inner  development,  with  psy- 
chological necessity.  According  to  Schleiermacher, 
this  change  from  a  sinful  to  a  saved  consciousness 
is  something  which  does  not  take  place  in  isolated 
fashion  for  individual  men,  but  is  dependent  upon 
the  general  turning  of  the  whole  human  species, 
which  did  occur  as  a  historical  fact  at  a  certain 
time  in  a  certain  place  on  the  basis  of  a  certain 
cause  and  that  cause  was  Jesus  Christ.  Schleier- 
macher continues  logically  that  if  Christ  is  to  be 
thought  the  adequate  cause  of  the  continuous  salva- 
tion of  Christianity,  then  he  must  have  had  an 
absolutely  powerful  and  blessed  consciousness  of 
God:  in  other  words,  he  must  have  become  the  re- 
ligious example  for  humanity  in  actual  reality,  and, 
in  so  far  as  his  person  was  an  entirely  unique 
phenomenon,  he  must  have  been  of  miraculous  or- 
igin. How  such  an  ideal  man,  in  whom  idea  and 
reality  are  completely  identical,  is  possible,  how 
one  can  harmonize  his  miraculous  origin  with  "  nat- 

290 


Historical  Criticism 

ural  development  "  which  must  have  gone  on  with- 
out any  deviation  and  without  any  inner  struggle, 
—  Schleiermacher  cannot  tell  us.  Here  the  roman- 
tic identification  of  ideal  and  reality,  of  poetry  and 
reasoning  thought,  burst  through  the  scientific  logic 
of  his  system.  Then,  too,  the  concession  to  the 
Church  supernaturalism  is  so  strongly  circumscribed 
that  the  approach  to  the  Church  mode  of  belief  re- 
mains, after  all,  a  mere  semblance.  Although 
Schleiermacher  does  not  directly  negate  the  super- 
natural birth,  resurrection,  ascension,  and  return  of 
Christ,  he  pushes  them  aside  as  unessential.  They 
are  of  no  importance  for  the  faith  and  can,  there- 
fore, be  offered  up  to  historical  criticism.  So,  too, 
Christ's  work  of  salvation  did  not  consist  in  the 
atonement  by  which  suf^cient  merit  was  gained  and 
placed  to  the  credit  of  sinful  humanity,  that  is, 
not  a  vicarious  satisfaction,  as  the  Church  dogma 
has  it;  but,  according  to  Schleiermacher,  the  work 
of  Christ  consisted  in  imparting  his  higher  con- 
sciousness of  God.  Psychologically  expressed,  that 
means  that  his  work  consisted  in  the  impression 
of  the  ideal  view  in  Jesus  efifecting  a  similar  life  of 
community  with  God  and  blessedness  in  God  for  the 
faithful.  And,  in  the  universality  of  this  higher 
self -consciousness,  in  this  community  with  God, 
consists  what  the  Church  calls  the  Holy  Spirit ;  ac- 
cording to  Schleiermacher,  it  is  not  one  of  the  per- 
sons of  the  Trinity,  but  it  is  nothing  other  than  the 
pious  "  common  spirit  of  the  Christian  congrega- 

291 


[The  Development  of  Christianity; 

tlon."  In  this  important  concept  of  the  Christian 
common  spirit  as  the  universal  divine  human  life, 
subjective  idealism  finds,  in  fact,  a  valuable  comple- 
ment and  expansion  on  the  side  of  historical  so- 
cial life.  However,  this  justified  and  valuable 
progress  beyond  rationalism  might  have  been  ac- 
complished without  the  detour  of  the  supernatural 
dogma  of  Christ ;  it  might  have  been  simply  reached 
by  a  logical  continuation  of  the  thought  of  the 
inner  development  of  the  human  spirit  through  the 
various  lower  and  higher  steps  of  development  nat- 
ural to  our  being.  And  therewith  we  move  from 
Schleiermacher's  dogmatics  to  Hegel's  philosophy 
of  religion. 

Herder  had  already  applied  the  thought  of  de- 
velopment to  the  world  of  nature,  and  in  so  far 
he  had  prepared  it  for  historical  consideration,  in 
that  he  directed  attention  to  the  natural  origin  and 
growth  of  language,  custom,  art,  and  religion,  and 
inasmuch  as  he  had  a  fine  understanding  for  the 
peculiarities  of  the  separate  peoples  in  history  and 
in  their  age.  Thereafter,  Schelling  first  applied  the 
thought  of  development  to  history  and  found  it  to 
be  a  continuous  incarnation  of  God.  But  with 
Hegel  the  whole  of  his  philosophy  hinged  upon  this 
thought;  it  was  the  key  to  the  knowledge  of  God 
and  of  the  world.  According  to  Hegel,  God  is  not 
merely  the  resting  being,  wrapped  up  in  Himself, 
beyond,  He  is  not  the  substance  in  which  all  differ- 
ences vanish,  but   He  is  the  infinite  spirit   whose 

292 


Historical  Criticism 

nature  is  thinking;  such  thinking  He  is  as  differ- 
entiates Himself  from  Himself  and  from  others, 
which  difference  then  resolves  into  a  unity  with  it- 
self. God  dismisses  nature  out  of  Himself  and 
makes  it  the  means  of  reproducing  Himself  in  an 
infinite  number  of  images,  finite  spirits.  "  Out  of 
the  chalice  of  the  whole  realm  of  spirits  infinity 
foams  for  Him."  History  is  the  process  by  which 
the  development  of  the  Infinite  Spirit  completes  it- 
self in  the  consciousness  of  finite  spirits.  It  is  the 
progressive  revelation  of  the  divine  spirit  and  a  lift- 
ing of  man  by  himself,  plane  by  plane,  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  own  real  nature  and  his  freedom 
in  God.  Hence  history  is  never  God-forsaken.  It 
is  never  merely  a  play  of  license  and  irrationality. 
Everywhere,  even  in  its  by-paths  and  its  mazes, 
in  its  struggles  and  its  sufferings,  it  is  permeated 
and  governed  by  the  teleological  reason  of  God. 
In  the  sentence  that  the  reasonable  is  real,  and  the 
real  is  reasonable,  he  expressed  so  optimistic  a  faith 
in  the  divine  government  of  the  world  as  had  no 
other  philosopher  since  Leibniz.  In  this  optimism 
of  a  thoroughly  teleological  consideration  of  history, 
a  struggle-weary  generation  found  the  much-sought 
reconciliation  of  its  high-strung  but  one-sided  ideal- 
ism, which  had  broken  with  reality,  and  the  real 
powers  of  history.  They  learned  to  look  upon  the 
existing  order  and  arrangement  of  society  with 
new  eyes ;  that  which  Enlightenment,  because  of  its 
purely  subjective  reasonable  criticism,  had  thrown 

295 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

aside  as  folly,  as  superstition  and  irrationality,  was 
now  discovered  to  have  an  inner  reasonableness,  a 
purpose  fulness,  a  striving  toward  ideals  which  in 
their  time  were  fully  justified,  even  though  they 
were  found  to  be  wanting  later  and  had  to  yield 
to  higher  ideals.  This  loving  understanding  of  his- 
torical life  and  striving  stood  in  good  stead,  par- 
ticularly for  the  history  of  religion.  The  latter 
is  the  process  of  development  of  divine  revelation 
in  the  human  race  and  the  elevation  of  humanity 
from  its  original  sensual  slavery  to  spiritual  free- 
dom, from  nature-humanity  to  God-humanity.  The 
single  steps  in  this  process  are  the  positive  religions ; 
they  had  never  been  arbitrarily  made  nor  were  they 
ever  merely  expressions  of  the  emotions  of  single 
pious  souls,  but  they  were  ever  the  natural  prod- 
ucts of  the  common  spirit  dwelling  in  individual 
peoples;  each  positive  religion  was  a  product  like 
law  and  custom,  art  and  science,  with  which  it 
stood  in  closest  organic  connection.  However,  in 
Christianity  it  is  not  only  the  spirit  of  a  single 
people,  but  the  spirit  of  humanity  in  general,  which 
becomes  conscious  of  its  essential  unity  with  God, 
of  its  God-humanity.  Hence  Christianity  is  "  the 
absolute  religion  "  or  "  the  revealed  religion,"  be- 
cause in  it  the  truth,  which  dwelt  more  or  less  in 
all  religions,  achieved  full  conscious  revelation  in 
the  knowledge  and  the  life  of  men.  It  is  not  as 
though  this  truth  had  been  clearly  understood  by 
all,  but  even  in  Christianity  this  truth  clothed  itself 

294 


Historical  Criticism 

in  the  forms  of  notions  which,  under  the  cloak  of 
symbols,  hid  the  truth  which  the  symbol  both  con- 
cealed and  revealed.  Such  symbols  of  religious 
truth  are  the  Church  doginas  and  forms  of  worship 
and,  although  not  one  of  them  taken  literally  can 
stand  the  test  of  reason,  still  they  must  not  be 
shoved  aside  in  such  fashion  as  the  superficial  En- 
lightenment had  shoved  them;  they  are  always  the 
earthly  vessels  containing  the  heavenly  treasure, 
which  the  pious  spirit  worships  darkly  and  emo- 
tionally, whereas  the  mature  reason  knows  them 
through  thought.  Emotion  belongs  to  religion,  ac- 
cording to  Hegel,  as  the  immediate  form  in  which 
the  religious  content  is  acquired,  experienced,  and 
lived.  But  this  form  of  immediate  feeling  is  neith- 
er the  peculiar  nature  nor  the  special  value  of  re- 
ligion, for  we  have  other  feelings  than  those  of 
religion  and  their  value  is  dependent  upon  it,  re- 
gardless of  their  content  wdiether  it  be  true  and  good 
or  foolish  and  bad.  Intensity  of  religious  emotion 
cannot  alone  be  taken  as  a  standard  of  measure  for 
religion,  else  the  religion  of  the  savages,  with  its 
wild,  orgiastic  ravings,  would  be  the  best  religion. 
The  objective  value  of  a  religion  rests  upon  its 
true  content,  which  can  be  grasped  by  reason;  but 
the  liveliness  of  a  religion  in  a  single  individual 
depends  upon  the  man's  acquisition  of  the  truth  in 
his  emotion  and  volition :  "  Would  you  have  Him  as 
your  possession,  then  feel  the  God  whom  you 
think!" 

395 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Psychologically  it  may  be  well  understood  that 
the  contemporaries  of  Hegel  understood  his  philos- 
ophy to  be  a  support  of  the  conservative  tendency 
toward  restoration  and  made  use  of  it  as  such.  Its 
valuation  of  the  historical,  its  proof  of  the  inner 
reasonableness  of  its  content  not  only  led  to  valua- 
ble study  of  history,  but  misled  into  the  na'ive  illu- 
sion which  makes  past  notions  and  forms  of  life 
seem  capable  of  repetition  and  establishes  them  as 
standard  authorities  for  an  entirely  different  pres- 
ent. Thus  the  politicians  misused  Hegel's  phil- 
osophy, employing  it  for  governmental  reaction  as 
the  theologians  did  for  a  Church  reaction.  Because 
Hegel  looked  upon  the  God-humanity, —  that  is, 
man's  consciousness  of  his  spiritual  union  with  and 
freedom  in  God  —  as  the  indwelling  principle  of 
development  of  all  the  history  of  religion  and,  there- 
fore, of  all  revealed  truth  of  Christianity,  therefore 
some  theologians  believed  that  they  might  under- 
stand that  to  mean  that  the  Church  dogma  of  the 
unique,  mythical  God-humanity  of  the  one  individ- 
ual, Jesus  of  Nazareth,  had  been  philosophically 
proved.  This  was  such  a  crass  misunderstanding 
of  Hegel's  philosophy  of  religion  that  it  is  scarcely 
conceivable  how  it  could  have  been  possible.  In 
fact,  this  error  made  by  so  many  can  be  understood 
only  as  the  after-effect  of  the  Romantic  mood  of 
the  times,  for  which  thinking  and  imagining  were 
so  mingled  together  that  the  difference  between 
ideal  truth  and  a  tangible  reality  might  be  entirely 

296 


Historical  Criticism 

forgotten  and  overlooked.  This  Romantic  confu- 
sion could  be  met  effectively  only  by  a  thorough 
and  sober  criticism  of  the  Biblical  documents  of 
Christianity.  It  is  the  permanent  merit  of  the 
Tübingen  critics,  Strauss  and  Bauer,  that  they  per- 
formed this  criticism  with  scientific  earnestness  and 
swept  away  the  fog  of  Romanticism. 

The  weakness  of  rationalistic  Enlightenment  did 
not  show  its  lack  of  spirit  and  taste  at  any  point  so 
clearly  as  in  the  treatment  of  Gospel  stories.  In 
them  they  explained  away  the  miracles  by  arbitrary 
interpretation  in  order  to  leave  the  rest  standing  as  a 
trivial  story.  In  the  baptism  of  Christ,  for  exam- 
ple, they  struck  out  the  coming  of  the  Spirit  while 
they  had  the  dove  fly.  On  the  other  hand,  Roman- 
ticists like  Herder  had  a  sense  of  the  ideal  content 
of  the  miracle  stories,  but  in  their  joy  thereat  they 
were  willing  to  accept  the  literal  reahty  of  the  story. 
That  was  the  state  of  affairs  until  1835.  Then 
came  the  young  Suabian,  David  Friedrich  Strauss, 
who  had  read  Hegel's  philosophy  understandingly 
and  therefore  knew^  that  the  idea  did  not  like  to 
pour  out  its  entire  fulness  in  one  individual,  in 
other  words  that  the  real  and  the  ideal  are  two 
different  things.  As  the  little  shepherd  boy,  David, 
once  slew  the  Philistine  with  his  sling,  so  David 
Strauss  laid  the  whole  theological  Philistine  set  of 
rationalists  and  supernaturalists  low  with  the  simple 
weapon  of  his  concept,  "  myth."  While  they  were 
quarreling  endlessly  as  to  whether  the  Biblical  mir- 

297 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

acles  should  be  explained  as  natural  or  supernatural, 
Strauss  came  and  ended  the  whole  nonsensical  quar- 
rel by  showing  that  they  were  neither  natural  nor 
supernatural  stories,  in  fact  that  they  were  no 
stories  at  all,  but  myths,  that  is  to  say  poems,  le- 
gends, which  were  not  arbitrarily  made  up  or 
thought  out,  but  which  grew  up  in  the  folk-con- 
sciousness by  an  unconscious  movement  of  fancy 
making  poetry.  According  to  Strauss,  the  Chris- 
tian myths  found  their  material  motives  mainly  in 
the  Old  Testament.  Strauss  made  no  answer  to 
the  question  as  to  what  historical  kernel  remained 
after  such  critical  dissection  of  the  Gospel  stories. 
As  a  substitute,  in  the  closing  treatise  of  his  Life 
of  Jesus,  he  showed  that  the  key  to  the  whole 
miraculous  picture  was  this:  that  humanity  itself 
was  the  God  who  had  become  man;  that  the  God- 
man  was  the  child  of  the  visible  mother,  nature, 
and  the  invisible  father,  the  spirit;  further,  he  was 
the  wonder-worker  by  reason  of  his  growing  ruler- 
ship  over  nature.  He  was  the  dying  and  resur- 
rected one  in  so  far  as  the  natural  passing  of  each 
individual  ever  gave  rise  to  the  higher  spiritual  life 
of  the  victorious  whole.  This  ideal  truth  was  con- 
ceived by  the  Christian  spirit  under  the  image  of 
the  single  person,  Jesus.  By  his  personal  life  and 
death,  the  Jesus  of  history  gave  the  opportunity 
thereto.  On  this  ground,  the  consciousness  of  his 
congregation  and  their  pious  belief  created  from  it 
the   ideal   Christ-image  of   faith.     These  thoughts 

29S 


Historical  Criticism 

of  Strauss  which,  with  all  their  spirited  grandeur, 
need  ethical  deepening,  rose  far  above  their  day  and 
could  not  attain  overpowering  importance  so  long  as 
the  historical  value  of  the  Gospel  sources  had  not 
been  thoroughly  investigated. 

That  work  was  first  performed  by  Christian 
Ferdinand  Baur,  the  teacher  of  Strauss.  He  was 
the  first  one  who  applied  the  idea  of  development 
to  the  history  of  Christianity.  In  his  fashion,  he 
applied  it  seriously  and  that  is  rare  with  other  the- 
ologians, even  to-day.  By  thorough  and  keen  crit- 
icism of  the  Pauline  letters  and  the  Gospel  of  John 
he  arrived  at  this  result:  that  the  origin  of  Chris- 
tianity is  not  to  be  conceived  as  the  effect  of  the 
single  person,  Jesus,  but  that  it  is  the  product  of 
a  powerful,  many-sided  development  of  the  ancient 
world,  in  which  many  factors  combined  their  ac- 
tivity, the  combination  and  inner  harmonization  of 
which  was  gradual  in  the  midst  of  struggle.  There- 
with the  scientific  key  to  the  historical  understand- 
ing of  the  origin  and  the  nature  of  Christianity  as 
the  religion  of  God-humanity  had  been  found;  it 
was  that  religion  which  had  inner  struggles  between 
the  active  factors  of  the  Jewish  religion  of  law  and 
the  heathen  religion  of  nature,  through  which  it 
had  to  struggle  toward  the  freedom  of  the  children 
of  God,  toward  a  Protestant,  autonomous  self-con- 
sciousness of  the  spirit  of  its  own  truth  and  free- 
dom in  God.  This  genuinely  Protestant  self-con- 
sciousness,   Baur    represented  in  his  own  personal 

299 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

character  —  in  the  combination  of  reverence  with 
freedom,  of  unselfish  modesty,  with  fearless  courage 
of  truth,  which  never  lowered  its  weapons  to  any 
authority,  but  sought  the  truth  for  its  own  sake, 
and  expressed  his  conviction  uncloaked,  careless  of 
the  disfavor  of  his  time,  which  pronounced  him 
heretic  and  cast  him  among  the  dead  and  con- 
quered. Then  did  his  justified  dignity  cry  in  the 
words  of  the  Apostle,  ''  We  seem  as  the  dead,  and 
behold  we  live !  " 


300 


CHAPTER  XVI 

REACTION   AND   NEW   STRUGGLES 

In  the  year  1799,  Schleiermacher  had  written  his 
Speeches  on  Religion  to  the  Cultured  among  Her 
Despisers.  In  182 1,  he  wrote  in  the  preface  to  the 
third  edition  as  follows :  "  The  times  have  changed 
so  remarkably  that  one  would  find  it  rather  neces- 
sary to  write  addresses  to  hypocrites  and  slaves  of 
the  letter,  to  the  ignorant  and  unlovingly  damning 
superstitious  and  super-faithful."  This  swing 
round  had  various  causes.  First  of  all,  Romanti- 
cism, as  we  have  seen,  had  broken  the  terrorism  of 
the  government  by  reason  and  had  helped  the  feel- 
ing heart  to  recover  its  rights.  Then,  too,  as  we 
have  also  seen,  philosophy  had  humiliated  the  self- 
glorifying  reason  of  the  enlightened  individual  and 
opened  to  view  the  reason  of  history,  the  true  and 
the  beautiful  in  the  customs  and  beliefs  of  the 
Fathers,  the  characteristics  of  national  life,  and  of 
the  popular  Church.  Thereto  was  added  the  seri- 
ousness of  the  time,  the  misfortunes  of  the  father- 
land under  Napoleonic  pressure,  followed  by  the  en- 
thusiasm of  the  popular  uprising  and  the  grateful 
joy  over  the  successful  release  from  foreign  ruler- 

301 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

ship,  which  the  pious  mind  regarded  as  divine  inter- 
vention. In  wide  circles  a  new  religious  life  awoke, 
one  which  was  dissatisfied  by  the  thin  and  cool  re- 
ligion of  reason  of  Enlightenment  and  the  ration- 
alism of  Kant;  one  which  first  held  to  the  emo- 
tional religion  of  popular  Pietism  and  to  its  BibHcal 
manner  of  belief  without  laying  any  special  weight 
on  specific  Church  confessional  dogmas.  Matters 
could  not  remain  thus.  The  newly  awakened  re- 
ligious emotion  needed  fixed  forms  in  order  to 
maintain  itself;  naturally,  it  found  these  only  in  the 
historically  molded  articles  of  faith  of  the  separate 
confessional  Churches.  Thus  the  newly  awakened 
religious  life  soon  became  a  restoration  bringing 
with  it  a  new  valuation  of  dogmatic  belief  and 
Church  community.  That  is  a  process  which  re- 
peats itself  so  often  in  history  that  one  can  perceive 
in  it  a  psychological  law.  This  new  ecclesiasticism 
might  have  developed  along  healthy  lines  if  it  had 
found  a  field  of  activity  for  its  energies  and  for  its 
moral  powers  in  political  life,  in  the  building  up  of 
a  popular  civic  and  social  life.  This,  however,  was 
denied  to  it.  For  the  beautiful  patriotic  hopes  of 
the  wars  for  liberty  were  condemned  to  be  set  aside 
under  the  despicable  political  restoration.  Natural- 
ly enough,  the  religious  vigor  exhausted  Itself  In 
the  propaganda  for  the  Pletistic  Church  faith,  In 
opposition  to  the  rationalists  who  defended  them- 
selves for  their  life;  and  thus  the  Church  and  polit- 
ical struggles  for  power,  in  the  reaction,  led  to  an 

302 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

election  in  which  the  means  for  the  supposedly 
sacred  purposes  were  anything  but  scrupulous. 
The  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  filled 
with  this  reaction  ever  growing  in  power  and  force, 
which  naturally  led  to  an  emphasis  of  the  opposi- 
tion which,  in  part  at  least,  almost  led  to  a  break 
with  the  State  Church.  Let  us  examine  the  de- 
tails. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  rule  of  King  Frederick 
William  III,  he  cherished  the  idea  of  a  union  of 
the  Lutheran  and  Reformed  Churches.  The  Ref- 
ormation Jubilee  of  1817  gave  him  the  occasion  for 
a  proclamation  recommending  the  practical  union 
of  these  two  confessions  into  an  evangelical  Church, 
without,  however,  seeking  to  force  it.  The  idea 
was  generally  applauded  and  successfully  brought 
about  in  Prussia  and  other  Protestant  countries, 
Baden  and  Pfalz.  Soon  thereafter,  the  King 
wished  to  crown  his  work  of  union  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  Church  agcnde  composed  by  himself. 
Against  this  there  was  general  opposition  which,  in 
the  circles  of  newly  awakened  Lutheranism,  grew 
into  an  opposition  to  the  union  altogether.  With 
the  awakening  of  the  Lutheran  dogma,  there  awoke 
also  the  rude,  intolerant  dogmatism  of  the  Lutheran 
theologians.  The  most  zealous  of  the  clerics  of 
this  movement  declared  the  union  a  work  of  the 
anti-Christian,  leveling,  revolutionary  spirit.  The 
congregations  behind  them  w^ould  not  be  robbed  of 
their  Luther.     A  royal  Cabinet  order  of  1834  at- 

303 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tempted  to  mollify  them  by  the  declaration  that  the 
validity  of  the  confessions  on  both  sides  would  not 
be  abrogated  by  the  union.  Its  only  success  was 
that  the  half-measure  caused  confusion  in  the  ranks 
of  the  friends  of  union  and  rather  strengthened 
than  weakened  the  opposition.  The  forcible  meas- 
ures employed  by  the  government  against  the  op- 
posing ministers  and  their  congregations  naturally 
spurred  them  on  and  on,  and  finally  drove  them  to 
a  declaration  of  freedom  from  the  unionist  State 
Church  and  the  formation  of  their  own  Old- 
Lutheran  sect.  During  this  confusion,  King  Fred- 
erick William  III  died.  With  the  ascent  of  his 
son,  Frederick  William  IV,  a  Romanticist  came  to 
the  Hohenzollern  throne.  Therewith,  that  is  from 
1840,  the  orthodox  Pietistic  party  which,  under  the 
crown  prince  had  been  leading  an  influential  side- 
government,  achieved  unlimited  rulership  in  Prus- 
sia. Their  theological  leader  Avas  Hengstenberg,  a 
professor  in  Berlin  who,  in  his  capacity  of  editor 
of  the  Evangelische  Kirchenzeitung,  exercised  a 
cruel  government  of  terror  by  his  denunciation  and 
condemnation  of  all  non-orthodox  theologians.  He 
was  supported  by  the  Gerlach  brothers,  von  Stahl, 
Eichhorn,  Raumer,  who  by  reason  of  their  official 
position  and  high  connections  were  able  to  place 
the  temporal  means  of  power  in  the  service  of  the 
Church  reaction.  Time  does  not  permit  me  to 
explain  in  detail  the  way  in  which  it  was  carried  out. 
I  recommend  for  more  detail  concerning  this  most 

304 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

joyless  period  of  recent  Church  history,  Hausrath's 
excellent  biography  of  Richard  Rothe,  second  vol- 
ume. 

The  climax  of  these  disorders  was  reached  in  the 
fifties  when,  after  the  failure  of  the  uprising  of 
1848,  the  strong  pressure  of  political  reaction  was 
added  to  the  ecclesiastical.  At  that  time  it  hap- 
pened that  orthodox  counselors  of  the  King  praised 
the  breaking  of  his  oath  of  a  state  constitution  as  a 
deed  pleasing  to  God ;  that  official  careers  were  made 
dependent  not  upon  thoroughness  but  upon  attitude 
toward  the  Church;  that  the  demand  for  the  turn- 
about of  sciences  for  faith  was  ordered  without 
further  explanation  at  the  universities;  that  the 
Protestant  dissidents  were  watched  by  the  police 
and  persecuted  as  political  conspirators.  Bunsen, 
who,  despite  his  Romantic  favoritism,  had  remained 
a  German  Protestant  Christian,  characterized  this 
period  as  follows  in  his  important  book.  The  Signs 
of  the  Times:  ''  Distrust  has  been  born,  anxiety 
fills  loyal  spirits,  the  authorities  are  divided  and 
confused,  the  faculties  are  paralyzed,  and  the  the- 
ological candidates  sink  ever  to  a  lower  grade  of 
culture  even  when  compared  with  the  Catholic. 
The  object  of  Stahl's  program  can  no  longer  be 
doubted:  slavery  under  the  hypocritical  semblance 
of  freedom."  Such  is  the  characterization  by  Bun- 
sen,  unfortunately  only  too  true. 

Pressure  always  produces  counter-pressure.  As 
in  the  former  administration  the  forced  zeal  with 

305 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

which  the  matter  of  union  had  been  pushed  roused 
the  opposition  of  the  old  Lutherans,  so  now  there 
began  against  the  reaction  of  orthodoxy  the  move- 
ment of  the  so-called  ''  Friends  of  Light."  At 
their  head  were  rationalist  preachers  like  Uhlich 
and  Wislizenus;  from  1841  they  popularized  their 
views  in  public  assemblies  and  understood  how  to 
make  their  affair  a  party  agitation  by  popular  or- 
atory. One  of  Wislizenus's  published  lectures  Writ 
or  Spirit f  caused  great  excitement.  In  effect,  he 
presented  Lessing's  ideas.  Scripture  was  declared 
to  be  a  glorious  witness  of  the  faith  of  early  times, 
but  was  not  recognized  to  be  a  binding  law  for  the 
spiritual  freedom  of  the  children  of  God,  upon 
which  rests  the  evangelical  Church.  At  bottom, 
you  see,  they  are  entirely  harmless  and  unassailable 
thoughts.  Hengstenberg's  Church  paper,  however, 
condemned  it  as  a  denial  of  the  Protestant  scriptural 
principle  and  a  breaking  away  from  Christianity; 
in  consequence,  the  Prussian  and  Saxon  police  for- 
bade further  meetings  of  the  Friends  of  Light.  In 
public  announcements  for  and  against  Wislizenus, 
the  dispute  continued  for  a  long  time,  particularly 
in  the  larger  cities  of  the  eastern  provinces.  In 
Breslau,  a  protest  was  drawn  up  in  favor  of  the 
freethinkers  against  Hengstenberg  and  the  whole  re- 
action and  it  was  signed  by  thousands.  Between 
these  two  parties,  publishing  pronouncements  for 
and  against  Wislizenus,  the  disciples  of  Schleier- 
macher's  tendency  under  the  leadership  of  the  Prot- 

306 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

estant  bishops,  Draesecke  and  Eylert,  placed  them- 
selves. The  latter  sent  forth  a  declaration  signed 
by  eighty-seven  notables  of  various  ranks,  wherein 
they  deplored  the  threatened  split  in  the  Church, 
threw  the  blame  for  it  on  Hengstenberg's  party,  and, 
as  a  solution  of  the  difficulties,  demanded  a  free 
Church  constitution  on  the  basis  of  Schleiermacher's 
congregational  principle.  This  declaration  gave 
Hengstenberg  the  opportunity  to  bring  to  trial, 
in  a  public  heresy  court,  the  Schleiermacher 
theology  which  he  hated  so  cordially  —  a  coun- 
terpart of  that  posthumous  heresy  court  which 
the  court  theologians  of  Justinian  sought  to 
hold  over  Origen,  in  the  sixth  century.  Mag- 
istrates of  Berlin,  Breslau,  and  Königsberg 
mixed  in  the  dispute.  They  forwarded  an  address 
to  King  Frederick  William  IV,  begging  protection 
for  Protestant  freedom  of  doctrine.  They  were 
most  ungraciously  received  by  the  Romantic  King 
v^ho  held  the  orthodox  parties  to  be  the  true  sup- 
ports of  throne  and  altar.  The  expulsion  from  of- 
fice of  the  preacher,  Rupp,  in  Königsberg  about 
the  same  time,  caused  the  formation  of  "  free  con- 
gregations "  which  differed  from  the  Friends  of 
Light  by  their  more  radical  tendency.  They  broke 
with  everything  ecclesiastical  and  their  Christianity 
was  essentially  a  moral  humanitarianism.  Despite 
the  freedom  of  faith  expressly  guaranteed  by  the 
constitution,  these  free  congregations  were  sup- 
pressed by  the  police  in  the  fifties. 

307 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

Restoration  and  reaction  was  the  character  not 
only  of  the  Protestant  but  also  of  the  Catholic 
Church  after  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. When,  after  the  fall  of  the  Napoleonic  rule, 
Pius  VII  was  made  ruler  of  the  Church  State,  his 
first  official  action  was  to  restore  the  Jesuit  Order, 
which  Clement  XIV  had  done  away  with ;  and  Pius 
VII  gave  the  Jesuits  their  old  constitution  with 
their  old  privileges.  In  Spain,  the  inquisition  which 
Napoleon  had  done  away  with  was  reinstated.  In 
Catholic  countries,  the  Bible  Societies  were  forbid- 
den, on  the  ground  that  they  were  a  plague,  that 
they  shook  the  bases  of  religion,  being  the  inventors 
of  godless  innovations. 

Among  the  theologians  of  the  Church  awoke  a 
new  zeal  for  sole  authority  on  the  part  of  clerics 
and  Pope.  Protestantism  was  called  atheism  and 
the  cause  of  all  revolution;  such  accusations  met 
with  success  among  passionate  populaces,  such  as 
those  of  South  France,  and  the  echo  was  so  strong 
that  bloody  persecution  of  the  Protestants  actually 
followed.  In  Switzerland,  the  work  of  the  Jesuits 
in  Catholic  Cantons  led  to  the  War  of  the  Separate 
League  in  1847,  and  ended  in  their  defeat.  In  an 
Encyclical  of  1832,  Pope  Gregory  XVI  declared 
Protestantism,  science,  and  the  freedom  of  the 
press,  the  causes  of  all  the  evils  of  governments, 
while  at  the  same  time  his  own  government  was 
plunging  the  Church  State  into  direst  disturbances, 
and  making  his  State  an  example  of  everything  that 

308 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

it  ought  not  to  be.  His  successor  in  1846  was 
Count  Mastai  Fereti,  as  Pius  IX.  His  pleasant 
personality  and  reforms  in  the  government  of  the 
Church  State  won  him  great  popularity.  He  passed 
for  a  liberal  Pope  —  a  white  raven !  —  some  even 
expected  that  he  would  restore  the  unity  of  Italy. 
When,  however,  the  revolution  of  1848  made  Rome 
a  republic  and  Church  possessions  were  forfeit, 
when  the  Pope  had  to  fly  from  Rome  and  could  not 
return  until  185 1  under  the  protection  of  French 
arms,  then  those  former  illusions  of  a  liberal 
Papacy  were  completely  destroyed  and  Pio  Nono 
became  the  representative  of  the  old  papal  sys- 
tem throughout  the  remainder  of  his  long  term. 
He  gave  a  new  halo  to  that  old  system  by  sanction- 
ing two  dogmas  that  the  Jesuits  long  had  wished, 
—  that  of  the  immaculate  conception  of  the  Holy 
Virgin  Mary,  and  the  still  more  important  one,  of 
the  infallibility  of  the  Pope  in  all  his  official  ac- 
tions. That  was  an  exceedingly  important  step  by 
which  a  crown  was  placed  on  the  papal  system. 
Thus  the  whole  Church,  including  the  priesthood, 
was  rendered  speechless  as  against  the  one  authori- 
tative will  of  the  Pope.  In  his  Encyclical  and  the 
Syllabus  of  1864,  Pio  Nono,  with  unheard  of  im- 
pudence, cast  his  glove  into  the  arena  against  all 
modern  culture,  against  the  freedom  of  nations  and 
of  souls,  in  order  to  uphold  energetically  the  old 
claim  of  the  Popes  to  unlimited  world-rulership. 
The  destruction  of  the  Church  State  in  consequence 

309 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

of  the  Franco-German  War,  in  September,  1870, 
altered  nothing  in  the  matter.  On  the  contrary,  the 
spiritual  power  of  the  Pope  was  freed  from  an  im- 
pediment and  it  became  a  greater  menace  than  ever 
to  the  freedom  and  culture  of  the  nations. 

The  extent  of  the  profound  opposition  of  princi- 
ples between  this  unchangeable  nature  of  Roman 
Catholicism  and  the  nature  of  the  modern  civilized 
state,  is  most  clearly  shown  by  the  continuous  con- 
flicts between  Rome  and  the  German  Protestant 
states,  which  have  continued  from  the  thirties  of  the 
last  century  to  the  present.  The  well  known  quar- 
rel about  mixed  marriages  was  the  beginning:  tht 
Archbishops  of  Cologne  and  Posen  brought  this 
about  by  forbidding  their  priests,  contrary  to  cus- 
tom and  the  laws  of  the  state,  to  perform  mixed 
marriages  in  cases  where  the  Catholic  education  of 
the  children  was  not  expressly  promised  before- 
hand. After  much  palaver  between  the  civic  au- 
thorities and  the  Church  princes,  the  obstinate  arch- 
bishops were  accused  of  perjury  and  disobedience 
and  condemned  to  imprisonment.  Scarcely  had 
Frederick  William  IV  ascended  the  throne  when  he 
released  those  same  archbishops  with  all  honors,  and 
in  the  marriage  question  the  matter  remained  as 
Rome  willed!  The  same  King  who  made  loyal 
Protestant  rationalists  feel  his  disfavor  on  every 
occasion,  had  most  delicate  consideration  for  Ro- 
man clerics  who  opposed  tlie  State !     The  fruits  of 

310 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

this  Romantic  policy  did  not  fail  to  appear,  and 
to  this  day,  in  part,  we  still  feel  them. 

The  theology  of  Hermes  gave  occasion  for  an- 
other case  of  governmental  v^^eakness.  Hermes, 
the  Catholic  dogmatist  of  Bonn,  following  well 
known  Scholastic  models,  sought  to  base  Catholic 
dogma,  regardless  of  its  supernatural  authority,  on 
the  natural  basis  of  reason;  his  teachings  met  with 
success  among  many  of  the  Catholic  theologians. 
After  his  death,  the  Roman  Inquisition  declared 
that  to  be  a  dangerous  innovation  and  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Cologne  forbade  Catholic  students  to  listen 
to  lectures  by  Hermesian  professors.  When  these 
professors  would  not  recognize  as  justified  the  con- 
demnation of  their  teacher,  they  were  removed  from 
their  academic  offices.  The  government  simply 
sacrificed  governmental  teachers  to  the  arbitrariness 
of  Rome! 

That  this  hierarchical  overbearing  procedure 
called  forth  decided  opposition  on  the  part  of  the 
CathoHc  lay  world,  upon  which  the  State  if  it  had 
so  desired  might  have  fallen  back  for  support,  was 
shown  by  the  anti-Church  movement  brought  about 
by  Bishop  Arnoldi  of  Treves.  In  1844,  this  Church 
prince  found  it  to  liis  purpose  to  rekindle  the  Cath- 
olic zeal  of  the  populace  of  the  Rhineland  by  an 
exposition  of  the  cloak  of  Christ  which  had  been 
preserved  in  Treves  as  a  relic  of  doubtful  origin. 
Millions  of  pilgrims  streamed  in  solemn  procession 

311 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

to  the  place  of  grace  and,  as  is  always  the  case,  the 
miraculous  cures  of  the  sick  did  not  fail.  Criti- 
cism was  not  lacking,  either,  but  its  strongest  voice 
was  the  letter  by  the  Catholic  priest  Ronge,  who 
called  the  drama  of  Treves  a  feast  of  idolatry  and 
declared  it  the  parallel  of  Tetzel's  sale  of  indul- 
gences. Naturally,  he  was  excommunicated  but  he 
found  many  supporters  among  the  Catholics,  who 
followed  him  out  of  the  Church  and  formed  the 
sect  of  "  German  Catholics,"  1845.  ^^  was  soon 
evident  that  Ronge  was  no  reformer  and  that  the 
"  German  Catholics  "  would  not  satisfy  the  large 
hopes  which  were  centred  upon  them.  (Just  as 
little  as  a  generation  later,  in  the  like  schism  of  the 
"  Old  Catholics.")  Perhaps  the  State  favor  in  the 
period  of  the  Culture  War,  which  so  strongly  moved 
Catholic  consciousness,  had  injured  these  latter  quite 
as  much  as  the  disfavor  of  the  conservative  govern- 
ments had  injured  the  "  German  Catholics."  Be- 
sides, both  of  these  movements  were  bound  to  fail 
because  they  occupied  a  doubtful  and  impossible 
middle  position  between  heteronomous  Catholicism 
and  autonomous  Protestantism,  between  two  oppos- 
ing principles.  Where  higher  stages  of  development 
are  present,  new  formations  not  so  far  advanced 
have  no  inner  justification  and  therefore  no  his- 
torical ability  to  live.  That  will  ever  repeat  itself, 
just  as  to-day  with  "  Reform  Catholicism."  That 
the  claims  of  the  Roman  hierarchy  can  be  effectually 
met  only  by  energetic  emphasis  of  the  modern  idea 

312 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

of  the  State  and  of  Protestant  freedom  of  con- 
science, both  of  individuals  and  of  congregations, 
was  shown  in  exemplary  fashion  in  the  fifties,  dur- 
ing the  Church  conflict  in  Baden.  The  higher 
clerics  understood  how  to  use  the  movement  of  1848 
in  their  interests;  when  everyone  was  crying  for 
freedom,  they  thought :  well,  we,  too,  want  freedom 
but  we  want  the  freedom  that  we  believe,  namely 
the  permission  to  exercise  an  unconditional,  unlim- 
ited rulership  over  the  entire  Church,  the  lower 
clerics,  and  the  laymen.  In  order  to  realize  this, 
their  "  freedom,"  the  bishops  of  southern  and  west- 
ern Germany,  under  the  leadership  of  the  valorous 
Ketteler  of  Mainz,  came  to  an  agreement.  Egged 
on  by  Ketteler,  the  Archbishop  of  Freiburg  re- 
fused further  obedience  to  the  laws  of  the  State 
and  declared  that  he  no  longer  desired  to  follow 
the  existing  laws  of  the  State  concerning  the  educa- 
tion and  appointment  of  priests  and  the  disposition 
of  Church  moneys.  State  officials  who  did  not  fol- 
low his  will  in  the  fulfilment  of  their  official  duties 
were  excommunicated ;  congregations  were  actually 
commanded  to  oppose  the  regulations  of  their  au- 
thorities when  they  were  counter  to  the  orders  of 
the  Archbishop;  priests  loyal  to  the  State  were 
punished  by  the  Church.  In  short,  an  actual  revolt 
of  the  Catholic  Church  of  Baden  against  the  State 
was  set  in  motion  by  the  Archbishop  with  the  ap- 
proval of  the  Pope !  So  far  did  the  solidarity  of  all 
and   every   reactionary   tendency   extend,   that   not 

3^3 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

only  the  Catholic  powers  such  as  Austria,  in  particu- 
lar, but  also  the  ruling  party  and  even  the  minister 
of  culture  of  Protestant  Prussia  —  all  ranged  them- 
selves on  the  side  of  the  law-opposing,  refractory 
Archbishop  of  Freiburg!  The  government  of 
Baden  first  struggled  against  him  with  absolutely 
blunt  weapons.  How  could  one  government  make 
energetic  opposition  to  Rome  when  that  govern- 
ment was  at  the  same  time  forcing  back  liberal 
Protestant  citizens  in  the  attempt  to  impose  a  re- 
actionary Church  order  upon  them?  Against  this 
attempt  the  storm  arose  in  Baden.  But  when,  final- 
ly, the  Catholicizing  ministry  sought  to  close  a 
treaty  with  Rome,  1859,  by  which  the  independence 
of  the  State  as  well  as  the  freedom  of  science  at  the 
universities  was  handed  over  to  Rome,  such  a  howl 
of  protest  swept  the  whole  land  that  the  treaty- 
making  ministry  had  to  retire.  Then  the  govern- 
ment of  the  new  era,  i860,  agreeing  with  the  repre- 
sentatives, arranged  the  affairs  of  both  Churches 
by  laws  worthy  of  the  State  and  by  meeting  the 
needs  of  the  people  of  both  confessions.  That  was 
the  outcome  of  the  Church  quarrel  in  Baden,  a 
proof  that  a  government  can  only  stand  victoriously 
against  the  claims  of  Rome  when  it  depends  entirely 
upon  the  will  of  the  people  and  the  civilization  of 
its  time.  The  opposite  example  is  furnished  by  the 
Prussian  Culture  War  two  decades  later,  which  had 
a  less  happy  and  less  praiseworthy  ending. 

Among  the  men  who  were  successful  in  building 
314 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

up  the  freethinking  Church  order  of  Baden  on  the 
basis  of  the  congregational  principle,  Richard 
Rothe,  one  of  the  most  important  theologians  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  was  the  chief.  He  was  decid- 
edly less  keen  in  scientific  thinking  than  Schleier- 
macher and  Biedermann,  the  Swiss  philosopher  of 
rehgion  who  came  from  the  Hegelian  school,  while 
for  Bauer's  historical  criticism  he  lacked  all  sense. 
The  miracle  world  of  Romanticism  had  caught  him 
in  his  youth,  and,  in  order  to  bring  that  world  into 
a  certain  harmony  with  the  real  world,  he  thought 
out  a  curious  theosophy  which,  like  the  ancient 
Gnosis,  was  more  poetry  than  science.  Rothe,  how- 
ever, was  more  than  a  scientific  scholar;  he  was  a 
clairvoyant  prophet,  a  prophet  who  could  interpret 
the  signs  of  the  times  in  the  past  and  the  present 
and  who  understood  from  them  how  to  foresee  the 
line  of  development.  With  the  intuition  of  a  gen- 
ius, he  recognized  that  the  object  of  the  historical 
development  of  Christianity  is  the  bursting  of 
Church  limitations  and  the  r-ealization  of  the  Chris- 
tian ideal  in  all  moral  and  earthly  society,  in  tho 
achievement  of  all  human  culture  activity  with  the 
Christian  spirit  of  truth  and  freedom  and  love.  He 
called  it,  somewhat  erroneously,  the  merging  of  the 
Church  into  the  State.  With  this  conviction,  he 
worked  for  a  Protestant  Church  constitution  on  the 
ground  of  the  congregational  principle,  employing 
laymen  in  Church  affairs,  not  only  exterior  but  in- 
terior.    In  order  to  give  this  principle  greater  ex- 

315 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

tent  in  the  Protestant  German  world,  Rothe  and 
men  who  thought  as  he  did,  theologians  and  lay- 
men, founded  the  Protestant  Union  whose  program 
he  formulated  in  various  articles  and  addresses 
somewhat  as  follows:  Modern  culture  must  be- 
come conscious  of  its  Christian  origin,  must,  there- 
fore, become  consciously  religious  and  Christian. 
The  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  must  give  up  its 
isolation  from  the  world,  must  acknowledge  all 
modern  efforts  for  culture  to  be  activities  of  the 
Christian  moral  spirit  and  must  honorably  further 
them.  That  the  success  of  this  undertaking  re- 
mained far  behind  Rothe's  ideal,  was  partly  the  re- 
sult of  unfavorable  external  circumstances,  the  cen- 
tering of  attention  on  purely  political  questions  of 
power  in  the  decades  following  1864,  and  partly 
the  blame  lay  with  the  Protestant  Union,  forced  back 
by  the  passionate  attacks  of  orthodoxy  to  its  own 
defense,  and  thus  never  rising  above  constant  pro- 
test against  the  pressure  of  Church  and  dogma, 
making  it  scarcely  possible  to  perform  positively 
fruitful  work  on  the  social  tasks  of  the  age. 

Various  societies  have  divided  up  this  work  of 
active  Protestant  Christianity.  The  struggle  for 
the  self-maintenance  of  Protestantism,  against  Ro- 
man incursion  and  lust  for  power,  has  been  carried 
on  by  the  Gustav  Adolph  Society  and  the  Evangeli- 
cal Band,  each  employing  different  means  but  each 
with  equal  sacrifice  and  courage.     The  societies  for 

316 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

home  and  foreign  missions  have  also  developed 
great  activity.  Naturally  the  form  of  their  activ- 
ity until  now  has  been  mainly  attached  to  the  Pietis- 
tic  orthodox  mode  of  behef  v^hich  they  received  at 
their  inception  from  the  renewal  of  Pietism,  and 
which  might  have  been  helpful  for  their  early  ac- 
tivity but  which,  as  time  rolled  on,  made  itself  felt 
as  a  limitation.  Hence  even  in  these  circles,  now 
and  again,  there  is  an  insight  that  they  must  jour- 
ney to  the  mountain  top  in  order  to  serve  the  Chris- 
tian ideal  in  larger  fashion,  more  boldly  and  more 
successfully. 

Men  like  Buss,  the  Swiss,  and  Warneck,  the 
German,  subjected  the  old  methods  of  foreign  mis- 
sion to  a  critical  examination  and  made  the  reforms 
required  by  the  times.  The  home  mission,  especial- 
ly, which  had  been  founded  amid  the  storms  of 
1848  by  Wichern,  has  learned  through  the  needs 
of  the  present  age  that  its  goal  must  be  made  high- 
er and  that  it  must  become  a  popular  social  and 
ethical  factor.  What  the  theologians  of  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century  in  England,  men  like 
Robertson,  Maurice,  and  Kingsley,  had  striven  for 
in  order  to  check  and  to  purify  the  social  movement 
of  the  time  by  the  Christian  spirit,  has  now  been  set 
in  motion  among  us  by  the  social  activities  of  men 
like  Bodelschwingh,  Stoecker,  and  Naumann,  and 
by  the  propositions  of  Sulze  for  social  congrega- 
tional activity.     That  is  undoubtedly  the  carrying 

317 


The  Development  of  Christianity 

out  of  the  great  program  of  "  practical  Christian- 
ity "  as  it  was  set  up  in  the  well  known  proclama- 
tion of  Emperor  WiUiam  I  and  in  the  corresponding 
laws  enacted  by  Bismarck,  for  which  it  served  as 
the  guiding  norm,  even  for  the  inner  poHcy  of  our 
government.  It  may  be  said  that  it  is  a  joy  to  see 
how  this  ideal  of  a  large  featured,  Christian  and 
social,  communal  activity  has  been  enthusiastically 
taken  up  by  the  younger  generation  of  theologians, 
and  with  what  self-sacrificing  zeal  they  are  labor- 
ing at  its  realization!  They  are  no  longer  satisfied 
with  specifically  Church  activity;  in  societies  of  all 
kinds,  they  are  untiringly  employed  in  the  culture 
and  the  education  of  the  people,  in  the  alleviation 
of  social  distresses,  in  the  reconciliation  and  har- 
monization of  social  classes;  in  short,  in  the  Chris- 
tianization  of  all  national  life  and  the  temporaliza- 
tion  of  Christianity  in  the  sense  of  Rothe.  This 
same  younger  generation,  which  has  so  far  widened 
its  field  of  practical  labor  and  which  is  so  courage- 
ous in  its  work,  has  lately  begun,  in  matters  theoret- 
ical, to  shake  off  the  blinkers  of  the  narrow  dog- 
matism of  their  school  theology  and,  with  a  wider 
range  of  vision,  is  looking  about  the  broad  realm  of 
the  science  of  universal  comparative  religion,  a 
movement  of  incalculable  import! 

I  think,  therefore,  that  we  may  look  forward  to 
the  future  trustfully  and  live  in  the  hope  that  the 
Christianity  of  the  twentieth  century  will  move  a 
good  stretch  closer  to  the  object  for  which  it  has 

318 


Reaction  and  New  Struggles 

striven  throughout  its  history  from  the  beginning: 
the  realization  of  God-humanity,  the  permeation  of 
all  moral  human  living  with  the  forces  of  the  divine 
spirit  of  truth,  of  freedom,  of  love. 


319 


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